Bad Seed
by Solus Nemo
Summary: Jay was nothing more than a painting no one knew the meaning to. One moment, a split second in time, had destroyed his entire life. He just needed someone to see passed the colorful oils that made up his facade, see who he truly was.
1. One

**Title:** Bad Seed  
**Author:** "Solus Nemo"  
**Summary:** Jason Hogart had no one, he needed no one. He was nothing more than a painting no one knew the meaning to. One moment, a split second in time, had destroyed his entire life. He just needed someone to see past the colorful oils that made up his facade, see who he truly was, share the common rip cord of a black secret.  
**Author's Note:** I'm touching this topic of which you don't know at the present because the show hasn't dared to yet, as far as I know at least. Most of us here are mature human beings and I'm going to do this story in a serious manner because things like this do happen in real life. The trick is to not get myself in trouble for breaking the Guidelines. Enough being cryptic.

Rating is the way it is for language and adult themes.  
**Disclaimer:** This story is completely and utterly fictitious. I do know own the rights, the characters, or anything else having to do with the television series "Degrassi: The Next Generation" nor any other part of the "Degrassi" family tree. I do own, however, any and all characters and plot lines I have created. **  
Pronunciation:** Ilse equals ILL-sah

**Chapter One**

"_Sweat seeps in your eyes at night, you realize that no one understands you at all."_

Loneliness, he knew it a little too well. There were days in which he tried to run from it, pulled the blankets over his head and screamed, made his throat go raw with the effort of trying to deal with it, the loneliness, somehow, someway. They were inane efforts, he knew that, but sometimes he just needed to try them anyway.

He had never had anyone other than the loneliness eating at him, causing his soul to slowly decay. He liked it that way – or at least preferred it – because that loneliness was the only solid thing in his life; people always left him, hurt him so badly he needed to cut them first before they had the chance to do it to him, but that feeling of being lonely would always be there. Even in a crowded room he was so painfully lonely. He pitied _himself_, he was so goddamn lonely.

Sometimes he got lucky and had days in which he was able to breathe. Unfortunately today wasn't one of those days and he was already aware he'd have to do anything and everything to keep his attention off of the monster on his back. Nothing he had ever done had gotten that hideous thing away from him, but keeping his mind off of it seemed to help – not significantly, but just enough to get through the day alive.

He leaned back into the car seat and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. If he didn't have to go to school to try to graduate and leave the learning institution forever he wouldn't go. All he really wanted to do was go somewhere and get shit faced, pass out. He needed the time to not be deathly confused as to who the hell he was acting like.

Most people in the world never have to ask that question: "_Hey, Fred, who am I acting like today?"_ but to Jay it was an hourly thing. There was a time in his life when he knew just who he was, where he was going in life, what he would die for. Now that moment on the time line of his life was a fading memory. His life had been destroyed in one brief encounter when he was ten and since then the old Jay, the nice kid with the bright smile who held good grades and had a healthy mind-set with healthy friends… well, that was a pile of stinking shit now to put it lightly.

This Jay, the new Jay, acted like he didn't give a crap about anyone or anything. His heart was calloused over with hate and he looked to drugs and booze and women to take away the black hole inside of him. Of course, the irony that went hand-in-hand with life was that the more he tried to fill himself up the more empty he became. That reality along with many others only managed to make him angrier, which brought him ever farther down his spiral. It was a ceaseless cycle: try to forget and fix himself, become more broken and slip a little further down, and then back to square one. It was a small circle, one not horribly complex at all, but it was effective.

He couldn't help his pathetic little cycle at all either. What could he do? Walk up to everyone he'd ever met and explain why he was the way he was? That sounds easy enough, but Jay knew the words would never come. There was no way he'd be able to tell anyone what had happened to him as a kid to cause him to give up everything, to be afraid of things at one time he was completely open to, to shatter people like he did just so he didn't have to be pain ridden – so that they might be able to understand his hurt.

The thing was that no one would be able to understand, not unless he did to them what had been done to him, but he had sworn to himself long ago that he would never do that. He might have been a depraved asshole, but he really did have limits – they might have been few and far between, but they were there all right.

With a deep sigh through his nose Jay opened his eyes and started out into the intersection, letting the car idle even though his was the only active car engine around. He was taking his time just as he always did, readying himself for the day ahead of him. It never really worked, steeling himself up for the possible events that took place between the sanctuary of bed or brain altering substances and the outside world, yet he always tried.

His head was throbbing slightly from the band coming through his sixteen speakers, some whiny emo band he didn't know the name of – not that he wanted one, they all sounded the same despite what different angsty words were in their names – but he didn't turn the volume down: it overrode the self-loathing thoughts in his mind.

Only because he didn't want to do any harm to his beloved car Jay pressed down on the accelerator, moved forward out of the intersection and toward Degrassi Community School. He hated that place, but he didn't have much of a choice because he wanted out of it so badly. Only a year to go, he would tell himself sometimes, only a year to go and then he could leave everyone choking on his dust.

Jay was getting a sadistic image of everyone who'd ever hurt him dying from the fumes from his car – granted he had shattered them first, but he had to, that's what he thought anyway in a mind consisting of a button and two pieces of string – when something off to his right caught his eye.

It was only a group of friends laughing, walking to school together, but it still filled Jay up with a sense of worthlessness. He didn't have anyone to do that with, he couldn't recall if he was even able to laugh sincerely anymore. Jay had screwed everything up just like he always did and because of that he had no one, no girlfriend, no friends, no nothing. He would have Sean had he not chosen to live with his parents, but even if the kid had stayed they weren't really that close to begin with.

Sean had only been there for a means of justification – to what Jay had forgotten – and a way to feel _something_. Jay had been proud, helping Sean go down the thug path, but it was pride for himself and not the kid he had used for self-gain. He didn't have that anymore. Karma, what a bitch.

Jay was never about to admit that he was a bad person because to say he was a bad person was to come clean to himself about how easily one moment in time can change every last thing about someone. He wasn't a good person either, that had been blown to Hell a long time ago, but he wasn't as bad as some other people. He used people, he hurt them badly, but only because if he didn't then they would drive the knife into his spine – kill or be killed. Jay had never done that, though, kill someone… okay, so he did, be he had no idea that it was going to go that far.

How was he suppose to know that Rick was going to come back into the school with a gun and shoot that Jimmy guy, then turn the gun on himself? Yes, he had inadvertently killed someone, but it's not like Rick didn't deserve it. That's what Jay told himself at night so that he could sleep as wrong as it was to say, at least it kept the guilt away.

Because he was speeding Jay reached the school with a great amount of time remaining before the bell rang. That was how he usually did things, but now he realized that he couldn't do the things he normally did, what was the point in doing them all alone? He cursed himself for ever deciding to come to the grounds in the first place, it wasn't like he had a chance of graduating no matter how often he showed up. He should have just stayed home and watched staged talk shows.

He went through the main doors of the school in spite of his wishes not to, there was no way he could evade humanity forever. Alex was a different story. Jay didn't want to run into her if he could help it, didn't want to risk getting his nose broken. The only way for that not to happen was to skip going anywhere near his locker and head right into his first hour class. He was going to look like a freak, one of those loser nerds who strive for good grades and a future that won't ever happen (he knew, he had been one of those people).

Ducking into the World Lit. classroom before Alex could get her hands on him, let alone find him, Jay sauntered coolly to the back of the room and to his seat. It truly was his seat, he had carved his name into the desktop and there was almost an imprint of his crossed arms and head from his many naps on the table surface. There were marks in the ceiling above his head from the pencils he had thrown into the tiles, pen marks on the back of the chair in from of him where he doodled from time to time. He couldn't recall actually learning anything in this class, but he managed to just squeak by on his tests and assignments.

The teacher wasn't yet in the room, it was only him and some other student in the chair across from him. It had to have been a new student because Jay didn't recognize her; even though he didn't take part in many school activities and on a normal day didn't spend much conscious time in the classrooms, he could match mostly every face with a name. He certainly would have recognized a looker like this new girl, of that Jay was sure.

She didn't seem to notice him or maybe she didn't want to. With her eyes focused down at the desk at a notebook in front of her, the new kid acted like she was the only person left on earth. She was chewing on the end of her pen, lightly so as not to cause the utensil to explode, and focusing hard on whatever it was she was trying to write.

This girl looked like she had come straight out of a "Twilight Zone" episode, like she had somehow fallen out of the television screen and turned to color. She was very attractive, to Jay anyway; he knew most guys didn't like elegant looking women, but he did. He could never get one to think of him as anything less than scum, and he never gave them a reason to, so he always settled. Among the many sexual thoughts that went through his head as he looked at the woman seated at the desk across from him, Jay wondered if could have a shot with her if he befriended her early enough before anyone else got to her. She looked enough like a loner, it might not be that hard.

Jay moved his gaze over to the notebook his mystery girl was writing in and laughed. For all her concentration the new kid had only one line written down, two words in the form of a letter. Her handwriting was in the form of small, regal cursive and even if it wasn't the paper was too far away for Jay to read.

He was almost overjoyed when the girl looked away from her task going nowhere and at him, her eyes, like liquid caramel, staying on his blue only momentarily before she looked away. She looked nauseous, terrified, but she hid it well enough. It was like the moment she looked at Jay her stomach went sour and wanted to heave up its contents. He had that effect on many people, he was used to it by now.

"What's so funny?" She was focusing on her letter again, visibly glad for the excuse not to look at Jay again.

"You look like you're trying so hard at that, but you only have one line down."

"I'm glad my inability to write a letter amuses you. Do you stick your nose into everyone's business or am I just a special exception?"

Jay smiled. "Only beautiful people's business so, yeah, you're the exception."

"You'll excuse me for not breaking down into a fit of giggles," the new girl replied, "that was really lame."

"Who're you writing to?"

She hesitated before responding and when she did her voice was strained, like it pained her to say "My brother".

"Why do you need to write a letter, couldn't you just call him?"

Jay wasn't much for feeling any kind of actual human emotion toward anyone. He felt bad for asking that question when he saw the way the stranger turned her head and looked at him, but that wasn't directed toward her – _Jay_ didn't like feeling awkward, he couldn't care less about what she felt like. It was like she was trying to guilt trip him and they had just met. He didn't know her name for Christ's sake and already she was trying to suck the life blood from him!

"He's in jail. It's kind of hard to be personal through a sheet of bullet proof glass while there's guards and other inmates all around, threatening to shove Drano down each other's throats."

Smirking, Jay held out his hand. "I'm Jay."

"Ilse," she replied and didn't take his hand. She turned back to her notebook, tapped it with her pen.

"And I thought Apple and Moxie CrimeFighter were bad."

Ilse looked at him, unamused. "My parents were quite sane when they named me, thank you very much." She seemed annoyed with him now, moved her attention from him one last time.

Though he was insensitive human slime, Jay knew when to stop talking. He leaned back into his chair and, never being one for modesty, studied Ilse as she delved back into her failing task. She didn't say anything about his watching her, just propped the side of her jaw on her weakly formed left fist and started tapping her paper with her pen again.

Apart from the fact that her clothing was a few decades behind the curve Ilse could easily have been lost in the shuffle. Her hair wasn't an electric blue or fire engine red, just an ordinary shade of brown, and the little make-up she wore was equally as modest: simple earth tones, nothing a street walking hooker would wear. She was very simple, like Alex or Emma, but there was no mistaking the fact that she was a girl: heels she could have gotten from her grandmother and strapless sun dress type of thing that went a little below her knees. Ilse had great legs, nice and long.

Jay was quite aware that it was never going to happen. If word hadn't gotten around to her already it would rather quickly. Ilse would be told that Jay was a no good criminal, a liar, a serial cheater, and an infecter – every last one of which were true. It didn't matter that he wanted to change his ways or that he had been treated for that STD, he would always be those adjectives. Even if he was able to change and become the person he used to be – impossible – those words would always be there, waiting just inside the shadows.

What a depressing thought.

"You're destroying my concentration," Ilse stated flatly.

"Come off it, doll face, how hard can it be to write a fucking letter?"

Jay smirked, meeting Ilse's shining eyes. She was about to say something when a third voice joined the party.

"I don't condone that kind of language, Jason. What service are you doing to the English language by speaking like that? There are many other words you can use in replace of your usual expletives."

Both students moved away from their forming cat fight and looked at the teacher who'd just entered the room. Mr. Sterling, no relation to Rod. He was a middle-aged balding man who appeared at first glance to be a hell of a lot more like a football player than an English teacher. It was a miracle the man could fit shirt collars around that massive neck of his, probably because he never wore anything other than button ups and never fastened the first two.

"I'm only doing my job to help it grow," Jay replied smugly. "Remember all that crap about it being a living language or whatever?"

Mr. Sterling shook his head, unwilling to admit that the worst student in his entire teaching career had a point for once. "Has the world stopped turning or am I just imagining you sitting there at your desk a good fifteen minutes before the bell's to ring?" Without waiting for a reply, the teacher switched his attention over to Ilse. "You must be my new student. No one sits next to Jason if they can help it, not unless they're new."

"I can understand why," she said.

Jay didn't mind at all when people talked about him like he wasn't right there in the room, he'd much rather be an observer to a conversation than in one. He didn't like talking very much, there were too many chances to slip up and show emotions one never meant to show. The last thing Jay ever wanted to do was become vulnerable. Vulnerability was what had caused his life to dissolve into a pile of foul muck, there was no way he was going to risk it happening again.

"It's Ilse, right?"

She nodded. "Ilse Miller. I'm going to have to spell it for you, aren't I?"

"I think I can manage, you're just going to have to tell me if I pronounce it wrong." Mr. Sterling picked his ledger up off the desk and paged through to the seating chart, writing down Ilse's name down. "You're going to be stuck there, I'm afraid, the other seats are taken."

Ilse shrugged one shoulder. "That's fine."

"Can't resist a bad boy, huh?" Jay smiled broadly.

"Don't flatter yourself," Ilse responded and closed her notebook, put it in her backpack. "May I have my text book now, Mr. Sterling?" She rose to her feet and walked to the front of the classroom.

When she passed Jay he got a whiff of her perfume: roses, rain wet roses. He made no attempt to hide the fact that he was watching her as she walked. She carried herself well, Jay liked that, and she also had a damn fine ass. But he didn't like the way she stood, legs together and arms crossed over her chest like she was cold when she clearly wasn't. Jay had a knack for catching on to people, for seeing through the facades they tried to put up because he did that himself.

Ilse was haunted by something, Jay could see that easily, and it was probably something a lot worse than what happened to him. He tried not to shudder at the thought, but he twitched visibly despite his efforts and hoped no one had noticed. They couldn't have, their backs were to him and thank goodness for that – Jay would have thanked God, but he didn't believe in Him.

Jason Hogart experiencing an emotion other than self-righteousness or loathing, feeling terror and pity and empathy toward another human being for once? He'd never hear the end of it.


	2. Two

**Chapter Two**

"_Should I open up my eyes or just ignore who you are and what you could have been? And should I open up my eyes and make believe you will change? So it's easier to not stay, to not stay."_

Desperate people believe in desperate things and Jay wasn't any different. He _needed_ to believe that change was possible, that at some point in time he'd stop being absolute scum, or else he saw no point in waking up in the morning.

A lot of people in the world would like that – hell, they'd have a party on his grave – but Jay didn't want to give them the pleasure. People hated him, his feelings were quite mutual, but until he stopped grasping onto the hope that man could change there was no way he would let anyone other than himself win.

So until he decided to drop dead Jay would stand just outside the carnival of life and look at the carnie goers through his black-tinted lenses and wish to be one of them; that care and burden free, that happy. He couldn't be one, of course, so he corrupted them, turned their values to rust and their morals to shit. They had to pay for what happened to him, had to give up their happiness because his was ripped from his hands. If he had to be miserable then come Hell or high water _everyone_ was going to be miserable. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a goddamn tooth.

During his brooding observations he was usually completely ignored. He must've been like a scab to everyone around him, their mindset being that if they let Jay be and didn't pick at him he could fade away into oblivion without leaving behind an even uglier scar. So as they walked by Jay, resident prick, they acted as though he wasn't standing at the edge of their peripheral vision, casually leaning against the bulletin board near the entrance foyer.

Most people looked anywhere other than at Jay, but a few – as always – tried to steal discreet glances. For all the rumors, the facts and half-truths about him spreading much like wildfire through the halls and classrooms, Jay still attracted some of the youngins like a moth to a flame. The girls would walk by gripping their books with deadly force and stare at him with their heads angled down. They would blush something fierce when Jay would up-nod at them, maybe even wink.

Jay wasn't amused at all by most of the little teenies, but he loved the attention. It was a great ego boost, all of the shy smiles, flushed cheeks, nervous giggles. That's all it was, though, an ego boost. None of those girls turned him on – unless they went to the ravine and wanted to earn a bracelet from the bad boy. For the most part they didn't want one so Jay simply stood and let the girls goggle at him while he sneered at the world.

It was boring, always had been, and now that he had no one by his side it was even worse. He was left alone with his thoughts, thoughts even an insane serial killer wouldn't dare touch with a sterilized barge pole.

Sometimes his thoughts gave him mini panic attacks, gave way to a deluge of imagery chronicling his pathetic life full of mistakes, complete with a background score of some hack one's wrists to shreds Evanescense song. He often got migraines from the wave of emotion, sound and picture that crashed into him, which subsequently led him to numb the pain with the help of a case of cheap beer or whatever he had with him at the moment.

Currently Jay was front row center to this motion picture, screen being the throng of passerby in the hallway. Like always the snapshots flew by too quickly, the contrast spiked up so high the colors hurt his eyes. He could have shut them, banged the back of his head against the wall a couple times and drive push-pins into his skull, but he didn't; his episodes never lasted long, he was able to wait them out.

The nausea, lightheadedness and lump the size of a tennis ball in his throat took longer to pass, being that it had nothing to do with the million mile an hour flashbacks. Alex had just walked by and if looks could kill Jay would have died one thousand deaths right on the spot.

While he hardly had to work at his "Whatever, I couldn't care less about what you think of me" attitude most outsiders would assume, in actuality it was a complete and total front. Always on some level he was worrying about what people thought of him. It was almost humorous, his hypocrisy. Though Jay pushed people away, told them to go screw themselves and that he couldn't give two shits about their thoughts of him, he didn't want to be alone used to it though he was and he _did_ care, very much in fact.

Right about now Jay did yet didn't want to know what Alex was thinking. _"I tinkered with your car enough when you weren't looking that it'll blow up when you start it"? "I'm going to do everything in my power to see you'll never be able to show your face in this town again"? "Look at me _one more time _and I'll come over there and kick you so hard in the nuts your dick'll be hanging out of your nose"?_ He didn't want to know if his assumptions were correct: that Alex, newly filled to the brim with hatred from seeing her sleazy ex-boyfriend, would tell anyone and everyone that her aforementioned sleazy ex-boyfriend had a strong fear of the dark – her word that she wouldn't tell a soul meant nothing now.

Alex had tried to destroy Homochuk's boyfriend's campaign for Student Body President, after all, and he hadn't received blow jobs from countless other girls including her ex-best friend, not to mention that whole Gonorrhea mess. Sure, she hadn't gone through with it, but she hadn't been visibly filled with the urge to slaughter her contender when she looked at him, the way she was looking at Jay right now.

Though she neither said nor mouthed any words to him, though her hands stayed fisted at her sides so she couldn't make any rude gestures, the expression on her face said it all. The coldness in Lexxie's eyes dropped the temperature in the room by at least ten degrees, Jay expected the windows and tile floors to frost over at any moment.

Jay needed fresh air. He waited until Alex was gone before hurrying outside and standing on the concrete steps, closed his eyes too tightly and breathed in too deeply.

Fuck her, she hadn't been that good anyway.

Putting his head back, staring at the Autumn gray sky, Jay said a big "fuck you" to whomever could hear him. Times like these he wanted to believe that God really wasn't anything less than some figure a man created one day to give his life a little more meaning – a desperate person believing in a desperate thing – because he apparently wasn't happy with the simple fact that people live and then they die with absolutely nothing beyond or more than that. Had Jay admitted that there really was some higher power he would blame every bad event in his life, every last fuck up, on that bigger force. But that would be a little too wacky, a cop-out bigger than any Jay had ever created with his own hands. Jay was desperate, no doubt about that, but not nearly desperate enough to believe in any kind of god just to give his life some purpose, to have someone else to blame things on.

When it all boiled down to it, it was Jay's fault for everything anyway so there really was no point in directing the blame toward anyone else. That pissed him off a great deal, made his head start pounding, how he alone destroyed everything.

The breeze was picking up, hitting the back of his neck and arms, making him feel uncomfortably cool. After spitting on the ground, trying to get a foul taste from his mouth, Jay went back into the building and instantly regretted it. Greenpeace was walking right toward him.

Jay couldn't understand why he had ever let her into his life, clearly he had taken a little too much of _something_ and the effects of whatever he had ingested lasted a great many days. She looked liked roadkill – worse, what roadkill wanted to be when it grew up. He hadn't taken enough showers, hadn't used enough steel wool and lye to get the feeling of her off of him.

Heading left, quickly trying to get to nowhere at all, Jay wondered how long it would take before Emma Nelson realized she was what she hated, that she had no idea what she was preaching to people about though she thought she did – a one woman PETA circus. How long before she grew one notch of smart? Jay would ram the intelligence right down her throat if he had to, as long as he didn't have to touch her that is.

Yes, he had liked the way Emma had virtue "or whatever" but that didn't mean he actually liked her as a person. She had been something pure and good to disease (in more ways than one). Jay had used her, no different than he had used anyone else, and evidently by the way she was hurrying to keep up with him she didn't realize that at all.

Maybe she was coming to tell him that she was the bad guy here as well. Emma had used Jay, that much was obvious, but no one seemed to want to realize that. She spouted crap about how she had watched someone die and had been thrown off kilter, just needed to get back on steady ground.

Any normal person would have never come back to the ravine after Jay first told them what people did in that van, slapped the green bracelet around their wrist and told them it was a prize in that tone of voice and urgency Jay had used. Emma hadn't done that, obviously.

Emma had been thrilled about Amy's reaction to her bracelet, the first one she didn't earn, and she wanted another. She had used Jay for her own personal gain, for a sense of worth and purpose – boy, did that sound familiar. Sean wasn't around and Jay was the next best thing. Perhaps this was Emma's way of subconscious payback for Jay helping the real Sean to come out, for Sean to be able to see just how stupid Emma Nelson really was and to be able to move on to Ellie, someone who understood him.

Greenpeace, just as unstable and dim on twisted facts as the organization of her nickname, called out Jay's name.

Maybe she was coming to give the bracelets back or maybe she had come because she pitied him. Ah, Emma. Emma, Emma, Emma. The Great Pitier Emma. Jay smiled inwardly at the thought of stating the fact that her pity caused a lot of problems. Like Rick. Had she not pitied him and led him on to believe that she was in love with him, things would have turned out differently.

Maybe that's why she had gone down on him like some kind of whore and not a very good one at that: _guilt_. She knew just as well as Jay did that she had a hand in what had happened. Yeah, Jay had made Rick believe that Jimmy was the mastermind behind the tar-and-feathering when it was really Jay, but Emma helped Rick go just that more farther over the edge. Emma was the one who had abused Rick by ostracizing him – the irony was she was campaigning _against_ abuse and that's just what she was doing, abusing. Emma had gotten so many people against that kid it wasn't even funny, had humiliated him and degraded him.

If Emma had just ignored Rick like any decent person would instead of going on that quest, had she not tried to strip Rick's civil liberties away, none of this would have ever happened. She wouldn't have seen Rick commit suicide because he would not have cracked as severely, thereby never trying to connect with Jay, never going down on him, never getting that STD. Everything would have been different.

No, Jay didn't agree with what Rick had done, he didn't think he should have been let off without any kind of punishment, but looking back on it no one had ever asked Rick's side of the story. Funny, coming from the guy who killed Rick. Jay didn't pull the trigger, he did worse than that. But it wouldn't have happened if Emma knew to leave well enough alone.

She still hadn't learned.

Acting like Jay didn't hear her was foolish, like a mouse pretending a lion wasn't roaring in its ear. He kept his head up anyway, eyes forward, and thought that given enough time Emma would get the point. Hopefully her head wasn't as thick as Jay thought it was.

Think about something else.

So far Jay had one class with Ilse Miller, his doll face. He'd only seen the back of her hairstyle – how many bobby pins were even in there, Jay wanted to ask her, though he was sure the amount of pins holding the rolls up were enough to fill every crevice of the Queen Mary – or glimpses of her polka dotted dress since first hour, which disappointed him highly. But not as much as Emma trying to get his attention.

"What is it, Greenpeace?" Jay asked without looking in her direction, without turning around or stopping walking.

Emma didn't say anything for a few seconds, but she was there, Jay was simply walking a little too fast for her. "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry about all that's happened."

"Yeah, well, I don't care. Everyone's always sorry about something, the word's lost it's meaning."

"I don't think you mean that."

"You never think, do you?"

The men's bathroom was at Jay's immediate right, he pushed open the door and walked inside. It wasn't much of a hideout, but a least Emma couldn't come in after him.

Pity, that's what Emma was going to give him. Jay didn't need her pity, didn't need anyone's pity. He'd much rather have no one than have Emma. That's not what he let her believe, but it was the truth. Let people believe that Jay had thrown something clean away, but they should know that Emma hadn't been all that clean when she'd gotten to him. She wanted it, for whatever reason: revenge, guilt, closure, a means to an end. Jay had wanted to watch her crawl around, kind of like if he had pulled the wings from a butterfly. Now that was done and she wasn't what he might have liked in the beginning, why would he want her back if he had ever wanted her in the first place?

Disgusted with himself, just like he always was, Jay walked into the farthest toilet stall from the door and closed and locked the forest green metal slab behind him. He didn't need to use the toilet, didn't even need to take a piss, he just needed the privacy.

With his backpack set on the ground, Jay squatted down and checked to see if any other sets of feet were in the room. None.

He zipped open the medium sized compartment of his backpack, then opened the zipper to the narrow hideaway buried behind a few instruction manuals, a calculator, pens and some random junk, painted black to match the fabric it was attached to.

Jay's savior was stashed away at the base of an overflowing pile of old Doublemint gum wrappers, notes, phone number tabs ripped from advertisements he'd never called about, in a small, cloudy zip-lock bag.

He wasn't addicted, wasn't in denial about not being addicted either. It just took the edge off, he only took it when he needed to and never much of it.

So this is what he had been reduced to, black tar heroin.

When he was a little kid his dream was to become a fireman. That had been too much to ask for, far too much.


	3. Three

**Chapter Three**

"_Hörst du die Engel singen? Hörst du die Harfen klingen? Hat sich das Leiden nicht gelohnt? Spürst du die Wärme kommen? Hast du den Berg erklommen? Siehst du den Himmel nicht?"_

If what Jay saw at the end of this white light really was Heaven, if he was really seeing it, he'd take the next flight to Hell. No Heaven, no matter how good it looked, would have the words _"Don't you want to be a man, Jason?"_ floating out toward him. If that's what Heaven had waiting for him, no, the suffering hasn't been worthwhile.

Take the hands from his throat, Fate, because he didn't want to go anywhere near Heaven and that white light, the singing angels and the harps, he didn't ever want to climb that mountain. He didn't want to feel the warmth coming because there was no warmth coming. Coldness, yes, but no warmth.

In reality, if Jay concentrated hard enough, the white light he was staring at was the reflection of the sun bouncing off the chrome of an ice blue Harley Davidson motorcycle.

The demons in his head were merely messing with him, speaking in tongues to get a rise out of him.

They always did that, the monster on his back and the demons jam packed in his mind, spoke to him in either whispers or a language either real or fabricated. Jay never understood the words, not in the normal sense, but he had always been able to grasp on to what they were trying to tell him.

"_Don't you want to be a man, Jason?"_

That simple question, one that had been spoken with such a chill of voice and such hardness, reverberated through Jay's skull cavern. He woke up to that question and fell asleep to it, as if the person who had originally asked him that had leaned over him and whispered into his ear. Sometimes Jay could even feel the warm, moist breath against his skin, could smell the Dr. Pepper and honey roasted peanuts clinging onto the carbon dioxide molecules.

"_Don't you want to be a man, Jason?"_

No, Jason didn't want to be a man. Look at what being a man had gotten him: a stocking full of coal and no one to share it with, phantoms stalking him that he couldn't see, endless nightmares.

Maybe it would all be easier if Jay left, packed his meager belongings into his car and drove away. Drive until there was no road left, until there was no earth to put road on, until he outran his past and it moved on to suck the life from some other poor soul.

Who was he kidding? Jay couldn't do that. He was a coward and cowards don't flee. It didn't matter how feverishly he pretended his scars weren't there because they'd be there for all of eternity. Those scars weren't visible to anyone else, only to him, and that was the worse punishment.

In a way he was like the Cassandra of Greek mythology, but instead of warning unlistening people of their doom Jay was trying to show them his scars. They couldn't see them so of course they didn't believe him. He was playing a game with them, a sick game of which no one should take seriously. Well, when Jay's scars opened up and he bled to death then they would wish they hadn't taken his story with a grain of salt.

That day couldn't come quickly enough.

Maybe she could see his scars, if only he could will her to look at him. He'd be happy with a nanosecond as long as she proved his existence, showed the world he wasn't as broken as he thought he was.

He was watching from the hood of his car on the other side of the street from her. Second lunch. The students were allowed to go outside to eat their meals if they wanted to and that's just was Ilse Miller had chosen to do. Jay, from his usual lunch-time post, had seen Doll Face settle down on one of the steps with her lunch – a sandwich and a jar of Snapple – and a thick hardcover book with a banana yellow dust jacket.

Jay had long ago been convinced that avid readers didn't want to face reality, they just chose literature over drugs or alcohol. Ilse was caught up in that book of hers like a drunkard at Happy Hour. What kind of reality was she trying to escape?

Years ago Jay had given up on books, but when he still had a great love for them he had been into fantasy. The Chronicles of Narnia were his favorite, he had actually caused damage to many of his books of the series, he had read them so many times. The door to that world was closed now, locked and barred, but Jay could still remember how happy he had been in that land.

For hours he would be lost in those books, imagining himself as one of the lead characters so he could partake in the many fascinating adventures that took place in Narnia. At the time he didn't _need_ to run through the magical doorway into a world other than his own. He had normal childhood problems, but nothing major enough to make him rely on books to help him escape by mind. But then his world burst into flames around him and when he did need those books, he was too big to fit through the doorway. They didn't want him in Narnia, they wouldn't help him leave his reality for another. Or maybe they tried, but he had been so broken nothing could help him anymore. Whichever it was, Jay had since set his once beloved books aside for their pages to yellow.

Pull up a picture of Jay back then – when he still looked forward to an adventure in Narnia with wide, glistening eyes – and Jay now, read the brief synopsis beside each image, and one would be shocked when told they were the same person. The boy had to still be in there, lost somewhere deep within the murky depths of a popped bubble, but it seemed unlikely.

The boy Jay was dead and gone, locked in a hidden room where no one would ever find its skeleton.

"_Don't you want to be a man, Jason?"_

There was no choice for him now, not with the boy gone for good and a passageway into another world closed off behind him. Jay was a man now, like it or not, and he had to suck it up. He had to bend over and pick up the tiny, charred pieces of the boy's life no matter how often or how loud he complained. From the effort, from time, Jay's back had fused into its stooped position – not that he ever wanted to look people in the eye anyway.

So the fact that he couldn't will Ilse to look at him didn't mean much at all, Jay wouldn't have been able to meet her gaze no matter how hard he tried. It wouldn't have done anything, if he was in fact able to straighten his back out and look into those caramel eyes, it wouldn't fix a single thing.

Some might say that Jay stewed too much in his own filth, but what else could he do? This is what he was used to, stewing, and he was damn good at it. If there was a contest held for people stewing in their own excrements – kind of like a hot dog eating contest or the Home Run Derby only not – Jason Hogart would win every single time. People would eventually stop showing up to the contest grounds because they knew they would never be able to match or beat Jay's awesome stewing abilities, the contest runners would simply mail to him the trophy every year.

Jay might legally change his middle name to Stewer just yet.

Okay, so he'll become Jason Stewer Hogart, but that didn't help the fact that Ilse couldn't lift her head long enough to glance at him for even one instant. She kept on being utterly engrossed in her book.

Ilse wore reading glasses. They looked foolish, turned the knob of her good looks down so far it was practically off, but they suited her in some strange way. Light pink horn rims that had so much gloss on them the frames looked like little mirrors with a million stars glowing faintly yet strongly on the surface.

It had amused Jay to see her wearing those things even when he first saw her put them on back in World Lit., like seeing a top hat and tap shoes on a frog. It looked awkward, but it still made one feel a smidgen happy or at least a little bit better than one was feeling before.

Doll Face laughed at a funny part in her book, her entire face lighting up from the smile. She was laughing in the way anyone would do during a depressing movie: absolutely thankful that some comedy relief came along, or maybe she had come across a genuinely funny line.

Though Ilse was pretty when she laughed, though she sounded rather nice while doing it, Jay still _hated_ to see other people happy and at the moment he hated Ilse for it. If he had his way no one on any world or plane would be happy until Jay was happy. He witnessed Ilse read the amusing line of her book to the girl sitting next to her before turning his head away.

Sliding off the hood of his car Jay started toward the school again. Keeping his eyes on the ground as he walked, hands in his pockets, he tried to push the still echoing question out of his mind. Drugs and booze cleared a lot of things from his mind, dulled him to such an extent that he had no states of movie flashbacks, but they replaced all of that with the question once spoken to him.

Most of the time that sentence wasn't as loud as it was now, just a barely audible kind of hiss from the blackness of Jay's mind. For some reason, today it was up front in the daylight of his consciousness as if the question wasn't happy just being in all his dreams. Today those eight words wanted to be something much more than they used to be, wanted to take over every aspect of Jay's life moreso than they already had.

Ilse was still talking to her companion when Jay walked up the steps passed them. The topic must have switched to school when he couldn't hear them, for Ilse was asking her friend which teachers were the worst.

Jay could have answered _"Mr. Simpson"_, but he stayed quiet and went into the school. He needed to go to his locker and get some of his text books for his last few classes, but he was frightened of what he might find there. Alex knew the combination to the lock, she could have stolen his stuff and filled the empty locker with bracelets to taunt him or shaving cream or something.

But when Alex was angry she did things worse than that. Maybe there was a dead cat in his locker or a blow up girl doll with a note pinned to her mouth, condoms that would cascade down on top of Jay when he opened the locker or forskins stolen from the hospital or maybe Alex herself to unleash the tirade she had finally lost the battle of keeping bottled down.

Everything looked all right when he got to his locker in the worst part of the school, nothing seemed out of place at the first glance, but then again Jay didn't have x-ray vision.

He wanted to laugh at himself as he turned the dial to the lock, pulled up the sequence of numbers that would open the device. Alex might have simply switched locks on him.

No dice, the lock opened like it was suppose to.

A part of Jay was expecting a voodoo devil to jump out of him when he opened the locker, the evil Ice Queen or some other villain from the history of Narnia, some kind of hound from the Underworld.

Well, that was just stupid. Jay was too high to be doing such mundane thing as opening a locker. The crème colored metal locker door swung outward and –

"_Don't you want to be a man, Jason?"_

Nothing. The voice was in his head, nowhere else.

In his locker everything was as it should be, nothing was misplaced or missing completely. Jay was able to exchange three books for three books without anything humiliating happening to him. When Alex said she didn't want anything to do with Jay, she meant it.

Jay shut his locker and put the lock back on, gave the dial a spin to a random number before leaving to vomit in the bathroom.

"_A real man, Jason? Don't you want to be a _real_ man?"_


	4. Four

**Chapter Four**

"_You extend your hand to those who suffer, to those who know what it really feels like, to those who've had a taste like that means something. And, oh, so sick I am and maybe I don't have a chance and maybe that is all I have and maybe this is a cry for help."_

So this is what it felt like to unravel.

That alone was a frightening sensation, but to bear witness to the actual uncoiling of one's own sanity was another thing entirely. It was a dull, persistent pain that made Jay's stomach churn. His stomach condition wasn't from the fear of becoming gradually more undone by the second, but from being sickened by the mere awareness of it.

He brought the beer bottle to his lips, finished off its contents without looking away from the bonfire raging away in front of him.

Jay had no one waiting for him at home, not even a fish, and that's precisely why he came to the ravine as often as he could. Loneliness he was able to deal with, but not its silence. Silence always did him in without fail. Silence was the large fresh, bleeding wound on a water buffalo's leg while lying in front of a hungry lion, the large cat being Jay's black thoughts and memories.

Or perhaps Jay was the wounded water buffalo and the chick next to him was the lion.

Had Jay a needle and thread with him he'd sew this chatterbox's mouth shut. She was like one of those annoying cartoon characters; chipmunk voice, fast speaking and didn't take a pause even after asking a question. Since she never seemed to take a breath Jay assumed she was more shark than human, but instead of having to keep swimming in order to stay alive this one had to keep on talking to pass water through her gills.

Though he wasn't paying the least bit of attention, every so often Jay would mutter a "yeah" or a "nah" or an "mm-hmm"-ing noise to make her believe he really was hanging on to every last one of her words.

He couldn't recall the name she had given him at the beginning of her endless speech, it was so horribly vanilla it wasn't worthy of being remembered. Actually, it could have been the most unique name in the world but Jay hadn't been listening so it didn't register in his brain.

White Noise, that's what seemed to fit her the most, was saying absolutely everything about positively nothing. How that was even possible, Jay didn't want to know. All he wanted to do at the moment was to get blind drunk and get some ass in one form or another. If White Noise was going to talk through the whole hooking-up event Jay's head would explode.

Her hand was on his leg as she babbled on about whatever it was she was talking about, thumb rubbing the outside of Jay's upper thigh as she leaned toward him so that her lips were close enough to his ear to be heard over the music in the background. Now and then White Noise, when he would look at her, made an expression that seemed to ask _"Well, aren't you going to do anything about it?"_ and Jay so far hadn't, just to spite her.

White Noise, apart from her annoying need to constantly remain in a conversation even if it was one-sided, was easy on the eyes. Even if she was ugly Jay was getting too wasted to care. He wanted human contact and sooner than later he was going to get it, sooner than later he was going to feel warmth against his skin.

The warmth of another person's flesh wasn't enough to melt the ice in his veins, but for a while it made Jay feel a little more alive. For a while the haze of sex and drugs and booze made him forget, forget about that day which was too vivid to have happened so many years ago, forget about Jay himself.

"Fucking Christ," Jay said, exasperated, "are we going to do this or not? Just leave now if we're not because I can't stand your fucking voice."

The hand was removed from his thigh so quickly that had Jay been looking at it he would have gotten whiplash. White Noise might have been shooting daggers at him through her eyes, but Jay didn't move his gaze away from the fire to find out. Taking another beer from the cooler behind him he twisted off the cap and drank half the bottle in a few gulps. He wasn't get drunk enough.

Driving home wasn't a problem, he didn't want to go home. It wasn't that far away anyway, he walked to the ravine and left his car in the underground parking garage under his cheep, seedy apartment building. Jay never worried about getting mugged or killed, he kept a switchblade on him at all times when off school grounds. He could to handle himself well enough without the switchblade as well.

"Excuse me?" White Noise must have given up on looking shocked when she realized Jay didn't want to look at her.

"I said I can't stand your fucking voice. Unless you're humming while my dick's in your mouth I don't want to hear a fucking peep out of you."

"You certainly jump right to the point, don't you?"

Jay turned the beer bottle around in his hand, watched the glass shine in the light from the fire.

"Right. Okay," she replied to his silence.

He didn't notice that White Noise had gotten off the picnic table they were sitting on until she walked into his line of vision. Jay rose to his feet as well and walked with this new girl to the van, chugging the rest of his beer as he went and throwing it off into the high grass.

Being with women in this kind of way had never registered a wrong in Jay's mind. There was always a willing participant, always someone who _wanted_ to be thrown away like a used tissue, maybe even needed to. Jay would get his human contact and the girl would get her bracelet, her prize to go along with the many others crowding her wrists.

Sex meant power and nothing more. The more power one had the better off one was suppose to be, but it never seemed to work out that way for Jay. He was able to forget, but that was about it, and he was never able to forget for very long. His hollowness, his nightmarish memories, would always come back to him like a filthy boomerang.

Once and only once Jay had thought stupidly about hitting himself in the head, breathing in the gas from an oven until he caused enough brain damage to cause amnesia. He had come close to trying, so very close, but stopped. There was too much risk involved in doing something like that and it might not work.

Yes, Jay didn't want to have his frontal lobes housing memory to go undamaged, but he also wanted to live. _Live_, that was a funny concept for someone like him. He was miserable, consumed with every horribly painful emotion known to man, but he wanted to be alive. As long as Jay was alive he could awake, as long as he had the power to awaken he had a chance to escape his nightmares. Death was eternal slumber, not a single chance to claw and scream and bite at consciousness until it groaned and pulled him into the waking world.

Death meant a labyrinth, one in which there was no exit. Death meant wandering the twists and turns for all of eternity and for whatever was beyond that.

But just because Jay wanted to keep on living, never mind the constant pain he was in, didn't mean that he didn't wish for everyone else to live. He only wanted one person dead out of billions, but he had no idea where that man lived or if he was still breathing any more than he knew if space aliens really did exist. Revenge in the form of slow, painful death was currently impossible.

So Jay numbed the voice – his voice this time, not the demons – screaming for vengeance with the ravine and all that was available in it.

The van – one of the many numbing objects for disposal in the ravine – was disgusting, to stop and think about everything that had gone on inside of it and all the filth that might be lingering inches deep in the floors and walls was too much to bear, it would cause even the most steel nerved man to scream and run for the hills, to gag and hurl until his own stomach eventually came up. But as vile though it might have been there was some solace to it.

The carpeting was fluffy and of a warm color, the seat cushion thick, the lighted candles flickering and causing shadows to dance on the fabric covering the windows. Even the harshest of things became soft once inside the black van, the loudest shriek suddenly ceased to be.

This was also a place were people lost their clean and shinning dignity. It was ripped from their person with gribby hands, played around with in the mud of longing and lust, spit on, kicked, stuffed in a blender and then returned only to have the process start all over again the next time one stepped into the vehicle and slid the door shut behind them.

Jay was immune to that raping, for his dignity had been taken for good once upon a time ago. Possibly because he had no dignity for the van to take it did twice as much damage to the other person he was with than any other couple that went inside of it. Jay didn't care, he did nothing about it, it was only something he had noticed.

He got no pleasure out of what he did in that van, hardly got any feeling out of it at all. Doing this, leaning back into the seat while some stranger gave him "favor", was like trying to stop up a leaking dam with bubble gum. Eventually the pressure would be too much and the dam would come crashing down, some small village washed away by the ocean of water that came out from behind the now destroyed dam.

A kitten was playing with the ball of his humanity, a vicious one with a conscious as defunct as Jay's. Gradually, ever so gradually, the humanity yarn ball was becoming smaller and smaller. The black kitten with the blood red eyes and dental work to make Count Dracula blush was working slowly but steadily, walking all through its environment in efforts to get the yarn so tangled around the furniture to try to make sense of it would be wishing every last stick of wood and ceramic to turn to dust and splinters. To get any kind of real pleasure out of what his faceless, nameless rabble of women did to him would do nothing to stop that kitten's sadistic play-time.

So this is what it felt like to unravel.

* * *

Thank you to those who've reviewed, even to those who haven't reviewed and just put this on your favorites list.

**Anon: **Since the show doesn't deal with Jay a lot I have to fill in the gaps of his thoughts, views, personality somehow. Just so you know, I actually don't mind Emma that much – when she keeps her mouth shut. I can't really help hating her with every fiber of my being (though not nearly as much as Ashley) and I have to make Jay seem three dimensional, so there you have it. I do, however, like Alex very much so and I'm not fond of Jay. At all. I only chose him as a lead character because I'm not happy with the show not explaining why he's the way that he is. The new kid is only there because I needed _someone_ who could work well with Jay. I tried the pre-existing characters of the show and I simply wasn't convinced, not with what I have in mind. Besides, every good author puts a bit of themselves into the characters.

**VoodooBat: **I wouldn't say all my stories are great because if I did then I wouldn't have gotten rid of one in particular. But thank you for the compliment.

**Unleash: **To me as long as the new student isn't absolutely perfect and/or horribly cliché I can stand them – _obviously_, seeing as how I have now two stories with new arrivals in them. As long as their father doesn't beat them and they don't cut themselves with razor blades because their father beats them while listening to "Hold On" by Good Charlotte and writing crappy angsty poetry/songs or they don't listen to said Good Charlotte song while trying to commit suicide in the idiot's manner... I'm good.

This story's about Jay after all, why would I want to go with a POV that isn't about him, that no one can understand? That's a rhetorical question, by the way.

Thank you very much for the compliment. I want you to feel that way, like you're sitting in Jay's head and watching the world through his eyes as he would see it. If Jay falls down, skins his hands and you can feel it then I've done my job.


	5. Five

**Chapter Five**

"_So you just sit there, stuck, afraid to risk reality, afraid to cause yourself more pain, to face insanity. But nothing ventured, nothing gained, you see your fear's your cage. You beg for help but you're alone, stuck in a helpless rage."_

His bedroom was horribly impersonal; white walls, vanilla carpeting, a full-sized bed with blindingly white bedsheets never made. The furniture in the room (two nightstands, a single bookcase crammed with aging books but no photographs or other knickknacks, a dresser with five drawers, a desk with only a lamp/office supply holder on the surface and lastly the bed) were all honey stained white birch and pressed up against the walls. The one television in the apartment was in the living room so the spot on the dresser were a TV might have gone was instead home to a deodorant stick, a watch, several sunglasses, one masculine chain necklace, a wallet and keys on a modest key chain. Nothing that would overtly scream "Jay lives here!"

He kept his room spotlessly clean for the most part only because he hardly spent any time in it. If he brought company over they usually stayed in the kitchen and living room areas of the apartment and if for some reason they did come to the bedroom, well, his bedroom décor reflected the personality its occupant gave off: _whatever._

Jay's room, in a more simple explanation, was like his car. The orange Civic was immaculate and lacking personality to any passerby when it was sitting in any parking lot; it was a bright color but there was no equally loud design painted it, the seat covers were a plain charcoal fabric, no dancing hula girl or Virgin Mary or Pinhead sat on the dashboard, nothing hung from the rear view mirror. Basically, unless Jay was in the vehicle to give it some pizazz it was an open invitation for boredom induced comas. The car and the bedroom were blank canvases, as soon as Jay showed up they turned into a Monet. At least that's what Jay hoped.

Except now, when he was trying to fall asleep, or while getting dressed he made an effort to stay out of his room. Jay never wanted to stay in any bedroom longer than absolutely necessary, it had been ingrained into him.

Despite the light coming from one of the nightstand lamps Jay didn't feel comfortable. He laid on his left side under the covers, bed clothing pulled up over his head. Though he was sweating to death Jay never dared to let his head be exposed. As long as Jay couldn't see out _he_ couldn't see in.

And so there he lay, buried in his cave of covers and waiting for sleep to come. The only way Jay ever stood a chance of falling asleep was to wait until his eyes shut of their own accord, of the weight of tiredness, he couldn't force it.

Jay might have been able to fall into slumber quicker if he went out into the living room and settled into the couch, but there was too much temptation there. One moment he could be staring at the ceiling and the next the television could be on, late night infomercials trying to rot his brain. He might find himself hungry because the kitchen was only a few feet away, he could get up and make himself something. That would be delaying and delay made the heaviness of his eyes dissipate.

If for some reason temptation didn't get the best of him and Jay was able to slip down the river of bad dreams, his mother would wake him up when she came home from work and want to know what he was doing sleeping on the couch. Jay couldn't tell her why, he couldn't start telling her the truth after all his years of lying to her and his father.

Jay wasn't afraid of his mother, he loved her very much, but he didn't want to slip up and hurt her. There was no way she would be able to live with herself when she come to face the reality that in essence it was her fault everything happened, but as long as she didn't know that anything bad had happened to begin with she would be fine.

Mrs. Hogart was a hard working mother. She was strict, but at the same time she trusted her son enough to not drill him with questions about where he was going, what he would be doing, and with whom he would be doing it with – even if she wanted to, she worked too often to stop Jay and play twenty questions with him.

Having divorced her husband when Jay was thirteen for completely average reasons she had moved with her son to this dump of an apartment – which was actually a lot better looking on the inside than the outside by leaps and bounds, but it was still very small – and started working two full-time jobs, one being third shift. She worked hard to keep a roof over Jay's head, the price being that the two hardly ever saw each other.

Jay would hopefully have succumbed to sleep by the time she got home from her second job at a leather factory, maybe even bringing home a bag of employee discount belts and handbags and jewelry from the factory store. She would be asleep when Jay awoke from whatever night terror he was due for tonight and showered, changed, grabbed a pop-tart, left for school. Whatever time he chose to return home his mother would have been long gone, only a note taped the refrigerator with a loving message proof that she had been in the house at all. It was tough, but the notes kept them reminded of each other.

Oddly, thinking about his own mother made Jay very tired. His eyes slid shut and with a sigh Jay jumped into the blackness behind his eyelids.

_It was snowing at Pooh Corner. Bright, fluffy snowflakes danced down through the clean air, whirling and twirling across the crisp blue winter sky backdrop. The snow on the ground, rolling with the hills, was for the most part barren of tracks, but close to the forest a trail of small animal tracks wound its way from off to the right, near an old rickety fence – tiny hoof and paw prints._

_Close by in a thick blanket of snow, bundled up so much in colorful winter gear that only a cheerful face proved the mound of clothing was indeed a human, little Jason sat under a giant oak tree. He was giggling something awful as he watched Pooh Bear and Piglet try to build a home for poor ol' Eeyore with gathered sticks. Their effort, though filled with respect and caring and love, was pitiful. Their small house was lopsided and small, too small for a donkey of Eeyore's size to walk in and out of it. _

_Jason was singing along gleefully to the animals__'__ outdoor song anyway, adding hearty "tiddly poms" where need be._

_The Hundred Acre Wood was beautiful at any time of year and Jason came by often to see how Christopher Robin and his friends were getting along. They went on many adventures, the group, and had much fun. Jason spread his time out evenly between everyone, but he never seemed to have _enough_ time in which to visit. _

_He was about to voice his small complaint, about to stand up and ask if he might help Pooh and Piglet with their task, when a rectangular chunk of foreground swung open much like a door. But there was no door there, it was clear winter sky! And a man stood in the doorway, milky yellow light hitting him from behind so he was silhouetted, face hidden in a veil of blackness._

_Slowly Jason's friends began to fade away, the house for Eeyore, the mighty oaks, the glistening white hills and the bright blue sky. Like water draining from a bath Jason soon found himself back in his bedroom, sitting in his big wine red arm chair with a book in his lap. He hadn't really been in the Hundred Acre Wood, he had only been reading about it._

_Because his favorite chair was directly across the room from the door Jason only had to lift his head to see the man standing in the doorway of his bedroom. It didn't fit, the man standing there silently halfway in a room overflowing with happy children's toys. The man was far too somber, the loud colors of Jason's toys dulled, the clown grinning happily, shining from the light bulb behind its stained glass, night light features stopped being so gay and humorous._

_The man stayed silent, didn't move. It was Jason's babysitter unless his parents had come home, which was unlikely because they had said they'd be gone until well past Jason's bedtime. If in fact it was his father standing in the doorway, why hadn't he greeted his son with his usual "Cabbages or Kings, my boy, cabbages or Kings?" greeting? That was Jason's favorite rhyme, The Walrus and the Carpenter. _

_The clock hanging above the red race car bed showed three passed six. Jason hadn't read through his bed time again, he still had a little time left._

"_Was I singing too loud?" Jason asked, for he did that often when reading his Pooh Bear book._

_Finally the man stepped into the room, but he was still too far away from the reading lamp – the only one on in the room – to be seen in great detail. "No, you weren't." His voice was flat, had been from the moment he first said a word in the house. _

_His babysitter was supposedly Daddy's age, but he looked a lot older. While Daddy still had a full head of head and his beard was only slightly getting sprinkled with salt and pepper, this guy's head was balder than a cue ball. Mr. Jacobs scowled to much, he had deep ruts forming around his mouth, while Daddy smiled all the time. Jason's father was very tall, almost dusted the tops of the doorways, but Mr. Jacobs was an imp in comparison and not one of the pretty ones because he seemed so unhappy all the time. He was boring too._

_Why did Jason even need a babysitter, he was old enough to take care of himself._

"_Then did you decide you wanted to hear my story?" Jason asked, excited. It wasn't a very good story, he had no idea where it was going yet and he spent too much time describing the characters and their families, but his parents gave him praise. They let him sit at the dinner table and draw with crayons on thin paper his many players of the story. He had gone through ten titles already, but his parents gladly and enthusiastically listened to each and every retelling of the project._

"_Yes," Mr. Jacobs replied simply. He didn't sound like he actually wanted to hear it at all, but Jason didn't mind. _

"_Okay, okay," the boy said hurriedly. He jumped out of the chair and ran over to his desk, waving at his babysitter with one hand. "You sit down on the bed and I'll get the drawings–" he said the word like 'drawrings' "–so you can know what the people look like."_

_Without visible or verbal protest Mr. Jacobs shut the bedroom door and walked halfway across the room to the bed, sat down on the edge of it with his hands intertwined loosely in his lap. "You're proud of that story, aren't you?"_

_Jason nodded passionately. "Yes, sir! In my spare time at the fire house I'm going to write more stories and maybe even get them published. But no matter how much money I get I'm not going to stop being a fireman and do you know why?"_

"_Why?" Still Mr. Jacobs's voice was flat, he didn't sound like he actually cared about anything._

"_Because I want to save lives, writing books doesn't do that. I mean, I don't want to be a hero or nothing, Mr. Jacobs, but I like helping people. I like giving people something to believe in. I want to help people be happy because I'm so happy. And if someone loses everything because of a fire they can have one of my books for free because no one should have nothing, no one should be alone or have nothing to believe in."_

_Jason started walking back to his chair with a modest smile on his face when Mr. Jacobs leaned forward and with a long arm lightly grabbed Jason's arm._

"_Come sit down next to me. My eye sight's bad, I won't be able to see your drawings from way over there."_

"_We can go to the living room where there's more light if you want to," Jason started calmly. "The light from the lamp doesn't reach this far away from my chair, you won't be able to see the drawings if I sit over here."_

"_I can see just fine here, there's enough light."_

_Jason wasn't a spoiled child. He was an only, but he knew full well that he couldn't have everything he wanted exactly when he wanted it. His habit was to whine when he felt uncomfortable. "But _I_ can't and I'm the one telling the story."_

_Mr. Jacobs was a grown-up, Jason the child, and upbringing told the boy to respect and listen to his elders. With a huff Jason sat down on the end of the bed closest to his chair and reading lamp. He couldn't explain why, but a part of him told him to push for going out into the living room where the windows reached from floor to ceiling along the wall looking out to Mrs. Howell's flower garden and back porch. It was summer, the widow would be eating her supper on that back porch and being the caring grandmother that she was would have angeled her chair toward the Hogart's living room like she always did when Jason's parents were away and he was left without them._

_But Jason stuffed that feeling down and labeled it as overreacting. Why should he have anything to worry about? The worst thing that had ever happened while he parents were away was a cut from a rose bush._

_Jason started his story, rubbing the healed wound on his thumb from that rose bush. He had to stop and start a few times because he had to go back and add new details to the piece and eventually stopped all together when Mr. Jacobs had slid so close to the boy that Jason was near falling off the bed._

_His parents did that while listening to his story, sat close to him on either side of him and "ooh"ed and "aah"ed at the woven piece of fiction about a frog who wanted to be a knight. But Mr. Jacobs wasn't Jason's father or mother, and Mommy and Daddy didn't put a hand on his leg in that way, didn't look at him like that – no, not at all like _that.

"_I don't like the way you're touching me, please stop." Mommy had taught him to do that, to say it sternly and loudly, clearly with conviction. She said to repeat it so that the bad person, if Jason ever met one, would get the message. "I don't like it at all, please stop."_

_Mr. Jacobs took the pictures away with his free hand, didn't remove his other from Jason's knee. He leaned his head down so that the boy's ear was right by his lips. "Don't you want to be a man, Jason?" The words weren't flat anymore, but alive. Oh, God, so alive. They chilled Jason to the core._

_Wriggling free wasn__'t an option, Mr. Jacobs held him too firmly with a hand now around his torso. __Squeezing his eyes shut Jason tried to melt away, out of Mr. Jacobs's grasp, away from the hand moving up his leg. Tigger. He was in the Wood again, bouncing around with Tigger and bothering Rabbit, spilling his freshly harvested carrots all over the–_

"_Relax. There's nothing wrong here, it's all right. Lay down."_

_The words Mr. Jacobs was speaking kept breaking through. Neither Narnia's forests nor even Toad Hall's walls were a match for Mr. Jacobs and his vile explanations that this was utterly normal, that if Jason would just relax he'd enjoy it. _

"_A real man, Jason? Don't you want to be a _real_ man?"_

Jay never screamed when he woke up from the memory, the painfully vivid memory of that night. He would awake in a cold sweat, the bed sheets tangled around the foot of the bed, the feeling of Mr. Jacobs's hand all over him, but he never once screamed. What would screaming do? Bring help that would come ten years too late.


	6. Six

This chapter is kind of AU only because I haven't seen the next episode yet and I'm sort of winging this right now. There's also some rampant profanity and a possibly over dramatic scene in here (but when is "Degrassi" not over dramatic?), just thought you'd like to know.

**Chapter Six**

"_It took so long to remember just what happened, I was so young and vestal then. You know it hurt me, but I'm breathing so I guess I'm still alive even if signs seem to tell me otherwise."_

The trick to office visits was to remain comatosely calm, to not show any kind or emotion or react in any way that could be interpreted as weakness. Just sit in the chair with a complacent expression, don't get frazzled. Yes, that was the key…until now. Now the key didn't fit, the lock had been changed.

There Jay stood, rattling the knob and practically kicking the door down and the slab of wood wouldn't budge.

Ms. Hatzilakos looked as though she wanted to hit him, reach across her desk and smack him across the face. Instead she straightened up in her chair, shuffled a small stack of papers in front of her to dispel some of her violent energy. "You've done a lot of things, Jason, but this by far takes the cake."

"Chocolate or vanilla? Oh, how about marble – that's my favorite."

"How can you joke about something like this?" Her face went an off shade of green: repulsion. She might have been pretty, but her poker face was absolutely terrible.

Jay replied indifferently to the stand-in principal's question. "Apparently quite easily."

Ms. Hatzilakos already had Jay's record out on the desk, resting beneath her steepled fingers. She leaned onto it now, an ineffective play at intimidation. "Jason, you know the school's policies."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean I agree with them."

"You used to be a very good kid, do you know that? High grades, an excellent attendance record, you played on your Little League team."

Jay remained a brick when it came to his emotions. "Short Stop. I was really good, too, like a pint sized Derek Jeter only a lot more awkward looking."

"Why did you throw that all away? You were a talented kid, an intelligent one–"

"The real smart kids are the ones who get the worst grades. I didn't have that much of a brain."

Ms. Hatzilakos shook her head. "Granted, you were still very smart. It was like overnight you changed and your grades started slipping, you left the baseball team, you stopped going in before school to talk to your English teacher about your writing, you gave up participating in the fund raisers and middle school's annual student rummage sale. You let go of everything and that's not an exaggeration."

Jay shrugged one shoulder. "Is that all in my record? People change. What are you getting at?"

"Do you know why you're down here?"

"Certainly not to talk about tonight's evening gown competition. I was thinking about wearing a nice hunter green, you know, to bring out my eyes. I'm guessing that'll take the judges' attention away from my problem areas."

The blonde woman on the other side of the desk sighed and shut her eyes briefly. "Gavin Mason was just here, I assume he must have passed you on his way out."

"What of it? Get to the point."

For all the authority she tried to give off Ms. Hatzilakos wasn't the kind of person who could handle a job like this. She was too caring. Though her face became stern, though she went right for the throat, at the back of her eyes it was evident she didn't want to have to do what she had to do. "Gavin told me about what happened with Richard Murray, how he had been bullying him and about what happened to him with the paint and feathers incident. Gavin told me that you and he were up to that stunt, that you convinced Richard that Jimmy Brooks was the one behind it all. Am I missing anything?"

"No, you've pretty much got it all."

"You know that because of what happened Richard brought a gun to school and shot Jimmy for your lie, put him in a wheel chair for what very well might be the rest of his life? You know that when Richard then turned the gun on someone else a fight for that gun ensued and it went off, fatally wounding Richard?"

"_You know_, that if this school had metal detectors it never would have gotten that far?"

There was that look again. "This school never saw a need for metal detectors because the events leading up to a possible shooting had never happened – until you and Gavin rigged up that bucket and pulled the cord unless, and let me know, someone else had a hand in this as well?"

Alex was the one who pulled the rope, that's what Jay could have mentioned. "No, there was no one else. It was Spinner's idea, I just went along with it."

"You could have talked him out of it so why didn't you? Richard was a troubled boy, he did a very bad thing, but to punish him like that was uncalled for. You two are not the ones who should have been punishing that boy, not in that manner, not in any manner."

"It's a little late for that, don't you think? A lot of good that'll do, telling me all of this now."

Ms. Hatzilakos started to gather papers together, she looked at the forms and not at Jay. "Just let it all go, didn't you? Threw it all into the furnace?"

"It made a toasty fire, I must say, some of the best s'mores I've ever had."

"That's enough, Jason. You're fully aware about the school's zero tolerance policy regarding bullying. Not only that, after what's happened here and to learn that these tragedies – one sitting in a wheelchair and one complete with a headstone – could have been prevented the only choice I have is to expel you. Gavin has been expelled as well."

So much for acting like an emotionless asshole. "But it was Spinner's idea, he was the one who came up with it and he was the one who put the conviction in Rick's head that it was all Jimmy."

"Again, you did nothing to change Gavin's mind, you did nothing to stop him. You also bullied Richard as bad, if not worse, than the others and because of that alone you leave me no choice."

"This is bullshit!"

"Watch your language," Ms. Hatzilakos warned.

Jay felt like exploding up out of his chair, but he stayed put. "No. Why should I? It doesn't matter anymore. This is fucking bullshit and you know it. Walk down those halls and you'll hear enough verbal abuse to last you a life time and if not that then you'll see the looks people give others, you'll read the mother fucking notes they write behind people's backs. _Everyone_'s bullying someone so why the fuck do you have to punish me for doing what everyone else did to that abusive bastard?"

"Tell me, Jason, did everyone publicly humiliate Richard to that extent? Did everyone pull that cord in unison to cause him to go over the edge?"

"Please, Rick practically shot himself. Okay, yeah, he needed a little help before the trigger was pulled and the gun went off, but in essence it's still suicide. He was going to break anyway, I don't see how the fuck what I did – which was nowhere near as much as that pissface Spinner did – did anything." So that was a lie, to go on top of all the others he made, but was Jay actually going to admit to anything?

Ms. Hatzilakos stood up, reached for the phone. "You're digging yourself a deeper hole here, Jason. Please get up and go clean out your locker, I'll notify your mother."

"Don't bother, she won't be home."

"Then I'll speak with your father."

Jay got out of the chair, started walking away. "Good for you."

Before Ms. Hatzilakos could say anything else, if she wanted to that is, Jay had left the office and began to his locker.

Gavin "Spinner" Mason. Jay had thought he was a decent enough kid, there was a lot he needed to learn, but he was decent. So much for that opinion. As if things couldn't have gotten worse after the Emma fiasco something like this had to happen. Why couldn't people learn to keep their mouths closed, it wasn't that hard.

Spinner had a long history, one of which Jay didn't really find all that amusing. He had dated the Terri girl Rick had been dating and put into a coma, who them recovered well enough to transfer schools. Whether because he had been dating his ex-girlfriend or whether because he genuinely hated the guy Spinner – long story short – had been the one to come up with the tar and feathering gag. Jay had liked it, though it was comic gold. The two of them had perfected the stunt and when it happened Jay had been the one who'd done most of the talking. Then Rick went on his rampage.

Jay and Spinner had hung out a couple of times, talked through a haze of Texas Highballs, and somewhere along the line Spinner had opened up his trap more than once. Jay had pushed it all to the back of his mind, hadn't really thought about it, because he had never thought he'd get expelled. So much for _that_.

Maybe Jay should have seen it coming instead of brooding about his past, instead of getting high and hooking-up. Spinner hadn't crossed Jay's mind once and because of that Jay had been thrown in the washing machine. Because Jay had thought that Spinner was such a low threat this happened. Expulsion, fucking Christ. That bastard.

Jay's facade as the hard working, perfect son was now blown to smithereens. Lies wouldn't help him explain himself to his parents, wouldn't help him get out of the pit he had gotten himself into. Sure, he'd have to explain why he would do such a thing to another student, but how the hell was Jay suppose to explain to his parents what had gotten him down to such a low point in the first place?

The grades hadn't been that much of a problem since he did always pass and the skipping classes thing was only slightly harder to answer to, but _this_?

"Yeah, Pops, I got expelled because I tarred and feathered a kid because he had put this girl into a coma, right? And I only got this violent and this pissed off and this fucked in the head because Mom's little homo fuck buddy Mark Jacobs had to rape me when I was seven and the only reason why that ever happened is because I didn't bitch long enough about not wanting to go into my room hours before normal. So I've stopped being a star athlete and a good student to beat people up, cause school shootings, have sex, get drunk, and snort heroin because I need to forget about ever being raped in the first place."

Oh yes, that would go over well, smooth as a baby's ass.

Spinner was still shoveling the contents of his locker into his backpack and black trash bags, no friends around him because since he came clean to Jimmy he didn't have any. Only a few people actually were around him, but they were getting things from their own lockers and weren't paying Spinner any mind.

Seeing as how there weren't very many people around it was easy for Jay to shove Spinner against his open locker door without much trouble, the metal door clanging against the ones behind it as Jay pinned Spinner there by a hand pressing down on the kid's thick neck. Jay's other hand was balled into a fist, just itching to pummel Spinner who was more like a limp noodle than someone who had to take medication for ADD.

"Are you happy now, you sonofabitch? Are you fucking happy? Got your conscious clean? Look, you rat bastard–"

"What?" Spinner hissed, some of his Flock of Seagulls haircut in his swollen eyes. The freak had been crying. "You wanna hit me? Go ahead, what more harm can it possibly do?"

Jay's eyes glistened and he sneered. He wanted something good to say, but nothing came. "A beating's too good for a crying pussy like you."

"Really?" Spinner pushed Jay off of him, causing the dishwasher blonde to back into someone who sounded familiar when she, unless it was a male with an extremely feminine voice, protested angrily.

When Spinner's fist came flying toward his face Jay quickly moved out of the way, to the right, and turned back to watch the punch meant for him collide with Ilse. She had been the girl Jay had bumped into and he almost laughed because the fight about to erupt in the hallway was palpable.

Eyes molten with anger Ilse didn't listen long to Spinner's sputtering apology before hitting him back. "If you ever touch me again I'll break your nose, do you understand?"

It might have gotten farther but Mr. Armstrong had rushed out of his classroom and grabbed Ilse by the crook of the arm. "That's quite enough, Miss Miller," he said as he tried to pull her away from the fight. He eventually let her go because she was swatting lightly at him, telling him that she disliked being touched with great intensity.

"He's the one who hit me first," Ilse then protested. "What was I suppose to do, let him get away with it?"

"More violence isn't the answer to violence. To the office now."

"Oh, _come on_. He smacked me right on the side of my jaw, I wasn't just going to stand there like an idiot and not do something about it."

Mr. Armstrong wasn't amused. "Go talk it out with Ms. Hatzilakos, I don't want to hear it."

Ilse looked toward Jay, met his eyes to finally prove his existence like he had onced needed her to do. "You're barbaric. This is your fault. If you hadn't marched over here and slammed him against his locker this wouldn't have happened. You're a nosey barbarian, I hate you." The pain in her jaw must've been finally acting up, for she touched the left side of her face with her hand.

"You only say that because you're lacking a few strong words, doll face. Besides, I love you," he said that last part extra sweet, like a character in a kid's show.

"Don't make me gag."

Mr. Armstrong was still there, arms crossed. "The office, Miss Miller. Now."

Ilse left the way Jay had come, heels clicking against the floor.

"Hey," Jay called after her, "maybe if you're suspended we can hang out sometime, Hell knows I'm going to be free for a long time."

"Screw you!"

"Fuck. I think you mean fuck you, and gladly," Jay yelled back. He looked at Spinner one last time before taking the long way back to his locker, sort of happy that he was expelled because Mr. Armstrong nor any other teacher couldn't do anything about him anymore.

That slight happiness faded when Jay thought about the explanation his parents would want for all of this.


	7. Seven

**Chapter Seven**

"_Broken face and broken hands, I'm a broken man."_

It was simple: Jay wouldn't go home. If he didn't go home he wouldn't have to face his parents and as long as he didn't confront them his parents wouldn't be devastated, hurt beyond repair. They'd be upset because he wouldn't be going back to the apartment or near his father's house, but not nearly as crushed by Jay telling his story. But there was no way Jay would be able to go through with it. This was a lose-lose situation and nothing he could do would make it any better.

Like staring through the windshield of his car at the pavement before him, that didn't help what was sure to come. He could study every crack in the road, every dimple and discoloration all he wanted, but he would still have to go back to the apartment eventually. His father was most likely starting over to it by now, steam pouring out of his ears and sewing a patchwork of obscenities that would hang in the stratosphere for decades.

No, Jay could run away but, he'd come home to stand in front of the firing squad sooner or later. If he spared Alex punishment akin to Jay's even though he kind of hated her he would run home with his tail between his legs.

Maybe it wouldn't be that bad.

Maybe it would be worse.

Jay couldn't tell them, but at the same time he had to. There was no way out of it, he had been expelled and because of that he needed to tell them everything, more lies wouldn't be able to explain anything at all. He was on the Titanic, doomed to sink, but hitting the iceberg head on was better than trying to go around it, then maybe he wasn't doomed to the frigid depths of the ocean floor after all.

That slight reassurance of staying afloat didn't make Jay start his car any faster, he remained sitting in the vehicle with both hands on the wheel and the engine off. He just needed time to think, that's all. He needed a few moments to grasp onto what he was going to tell them.

The looks on his parents' faces were going to kill him. No matter how he broke it their reaction was going to be the worst kind of death.

What had he done to deserve a life like this?

He was about to answer that question by reciting his laundry list of screw ups when he smiled, seeing Ilse jog down the front steps of the school. She looked extremely unhappy.

Jay stuck his head out of the open driver's door window. "I really _am_ psychic. I totally called that! How long?"

Ilse lifted her head, looked toward him and scowled. "For the rest of the day no thanks to you," she said coolly. "What are you still doing here, anyway?"

"I was waiting for you," Jay lied. "Do you need a ride?"

She scoffed. "Like I want to get into a car with you of all people. I can walk."

"I'm sorry okay? At least let me make it up to you, the longer it takes me to get home the better."

"Self-centered too. Nosey and self-centered."

Jay smiled at her. "I'm also shallow, a closet masochist."

Ilse was at the Civic now, meaning to pass through the parking lot to get to the public bus stop. "That makes the two of us."

"It's suppose to rain soon, you know. We wouldn't want that dress to wrinkle now, would we? Do you have enough paid there? People could use you as a black-and-white picnic blanket."

"Well, I like it. It's a swing dress, haven't you ever seen one before?"

"In my grandmother's pictures, sure. She didn't have the quarter length sleeves, though, and she couldn't blind anyone with the fabric."

Ilse rolled her eyes. "You honestly thought I'd agree on you giving me a ride home?"

"I won't run us off a cliff, you have my word, and no more cracks on your fashion sense or what little of one you have. I mean, really, you look like something from _I Love Lucy_, it's that bad."

"I'm walking away now," Ilse stated sharply. "Have a nice life."

"Come on, don't you have a sense of humor?"

Turning back Ilse leaned down into the open shot gun window. "Of course I do. For instance, I could make the observation that your face looks as though it collided with the floor at birth, but I choose not to only because I'm not that rude a person."

"Not that bad, doll face. Needs a little work, but not bad."

"Stop calling me that," Ilse demanded, her entire body outside of the car again.

"Let me give you a ride and I will, doll face."

She didn't get in.

"Please, doll face? I'll just follow you home if you say no, I think we're going in the same general direction. Doll face? Doll face? Doll face, doll face, doll face?"

With a sigh, Ilse opened the passenger side door and got into the car, slammed the door shut. "Shut up, shut up, shut up. I'm only doing this because I don't want to stand at the bus stop for twenty minutes." She straightened out her skirt before putting her seatbelt on. "Try anything and you're hamburger meat."

Jay nodded, put the key into the ignition and started the car. He turned down the radio when it come on at full blast, a song he hated flowing through his many speakers. Neither of them said anything as Jay drove out of the parking, then he struggled for a conversation.

"Which way?" he asked, waiting to enter the street.

"Left. Garfield Avenue."

Jay smirked, turning left and starting the journey down the near abandoned suburban roadways. "I live down that way."

Ilse was looking out the window, didn't turn to look at the driver. "Just my luck."

"I'm not that bad, not once you get passed all the stuff about me you hear in the halls."

She didn't reply.

Frowning, Jay tried to think up things to keep awkward silence at bay. "How's your jaw?"

"Not broken."

"Yeah, the Spinster never had much force behind his punches."

Again, Ilse didn't say anything in response.

"How's your letter coming? Got a sentence down now?" Jay chuckled, but quickly stopped when he noticed that Ilse's face was set in anger.

Four blocks later and the quiet was gnawing away at him, pointing and laughing at his inability to carry on a conversation with a pretty girl. "So…. Where do you shop for your wardrobe?"

"You mean what garbage bin I raid at night?"

"No, I mean what stores? Salvation Army or whatever?"

Ilse shook her head, but kept staring out the window, her hair dancing in the wind the car created. "Sometimes that or the Internet. Mainly I fix up my mother's and grandmother's old clothes that I got from the closet or attic. Once I made my own cocktail dress from a pattern, but it came out deformed. It was suppose to look like the black-and-white one Grace Kelley wore in _Rear Window_, but it wasn't anywhere close."

"Why, though? Why aren't you happy wearing jeans and a t-shirt?"

"Women were beautiful then, that's why," Ilse stated earnestly. "Just so plain, so simple, beautiful."

"I take it you've never seen Brooke Burke."

Ilse laughed. She actually laughed. "She is kind of hot, isn't she?"

"Totally."

Ilse smiled, shook her head. "All the same, you can't watch a television show from the '40s, the '50s, the '60s and say the women weren't beautiful."

"All right, I'll give you that one, but aren't you warm under all of that fabric? In the summer you must be shoving ice cubes down your back."

"You'd be surprised. It's the yellow one," Ilse said when they finally reached Garfield Avenue, "the one with the blue shutters."

Pulling the car over to the curb in front of the house Ilse had just described, Jay unlocked the doors. "That wasn't so terrible, was it? And, look, about that date…."

The door was already open, Ilse had one leg out and her seatbelt off. "I'm not interested."

Jay glared passed her, at the small front yard of the house. "Most of what you hear about me are rumors and the stuff that aren't, well…I can be a good guy when I want to be."

"I find that hard to believe. You serial cheat on your girlfriend, you steal things from the school, you cause some poor kid to get killed. Even if you hadn't done those things, if you were Mr. Squeaky Clean Good Guy I wouldn't be interested."

"Why not? I thought women love bad boys."

"That's the thing," Ilse replied calmly. "You're a boy."

Jay's lips curled. "You're a fucking lezbo?"

"Well, when you put it like _that_…" Ilse gathered her things off the mud mat and got out of the car, shut the door. "Remind me to add jerk-off to that list of mine, would you?"

"You don't know what you're missing, doll face," Jay spat.

"Actually, I think I do: an STD passing sleaze ball." Ilse smiled wryly at him and then turned on her heel, walked up the steps cut into the small hill her home was resting on.

Nothing was going right for Jay today. He pulled away from the curb and drove the few blocks home in perturbed silence. The girl he had a crush on was a no good dyke. What else was going to go sour? What else?

The icing on the cake would be his parents disowning him, kicking him out of the house because Jay was no longer their son – just a water stained photograph of what their son once was. Yes, that would be absolutely _perfect_.

* * *

So that wasn't the best chapter I've written, but it's only really there to create some padding between the last chapter and the new one. To the reviewers, I thank you.

**barelyalive:** It is sad, isn't it? But this is really the only thing I could think of that would cause Jay to be as…well, as Jay as Jay is – in my mind at least. I'm glad you like it, though.

**DegrassiGirl:** He isn't my favorite. I'll admit I like his eyes and he's very easy to write about, but he isn't my favorite. I hope you keep on liking this.

**crashet: **I don't mean to sound like a know-it-all so, please, tell me if I start coming off as one. _"__Until recently heroin_…_almost exclusively was injected either intravenously, subcutaneously…or intramuscularly, but there is now a high number of people snorting the drug…__The availability of higher purity heroin has meant that users can now snort or smoke the narcotic. Evidence suggests that heroin snorting is widespread or increasing in those areas of the country where high-purity heroin is available…This method…may be more appealing to new users because it eliminates both the fear of acquiring syringe-borne diseases…and the…stigma attached to intravenous heroin use."_ (source: Heroin Addiction – Helping Addicts – Heroin Overview) Short answer: people do snort heroin. It may not be as popular or as Hollywood (save _Lost_) as injecting or smoking, but it's there.


	8. Eight

**Chapter Eight**

"_Ein heller Schein am Firmament Mein Herz brennt."_

The sun exploded, sending down a fiery deluge of bitter rage. Everything once beautiful in the world was now blackened with soot, burning to the charred ground, becoming piles of ash. Beauty was no more, now all beauty was hideousness.

Jay was the last one standing, right smack dab in the middle of the ruins of the world. Everything other than he, who on the surface appeared unscathed and clean, was gone forever. Jason Hogart was now the King of Nothing, the only source of light being his burning heart that shone brightly on the heavens.

Well, that's what was going to become of him, anyway. At the moment the sun was as it always was: a somewhat young, bright yellow star high in the sky.

He had only been imagining things, the heroin working through his system sending forth images before his mind's eye about what might be to come. Talking to his parents while high wasn't one of Jay's better ideas, but he needed to calm himself down, he needed to be prepared for what was going to happen.

For the time being Jay's father was far too upset to notice just how out of it his son was.

"Didn't we raise you better than this, Jason?" that's what Dad kept repeating over and over again. Mom was standing beside him with her arms crossed, never saying anything but shaking or nodding her head grimly.

Sitting at the dining table in the apartment Jay so far had said nothing in response to anything his father had said. He kept his eyes focused on the white Formica table top, picked at his nails. The words being spoken to him rolled off his back, he heard them but he never grabbed hold of them because he didn't want to.

A part of Jay was only slightly convinced that if he just didn't say anything at all his parents would ground him out of frustration and try not to get any answers out of him. Fattest chance in the world, so obese the thing was physically unable to get up off the couch, but it was still worth a try. Even if Jay did answer some of his parents' questions he wouldn't be able to get the words correct.

How the hell was Jay going to explain everything when even he didn't know why he had done half the things he'd done?

Silence was far better at the moment than "I don't know", but evidently by the way his father kept right on speaking neither of Jay's parents could, unfortunately, read his mind.

"Why would you do something like that?" Dad asked, his voice strained with emotion. "That's not how we raised you, Jason. Where did we go wrong? What happened?"

Jay wanted to laugh, wanted to scoff and say _"Where to start!"_ but his lips remained sealed and chapped.

If there was any kind of justice in the world Spinner was getting his, that's what Jay thought about instead of what to eventually say to his parents. Maybe Spinner's parents were ripping him a new one and that thought alone helped Jay convince himself his situation wasn't really all that bad – he wasn't alone, not yet at least.

Jay would be alone the very moment he mentioned anything as to why he was as fucked up as he was, if he could even find a way to put it. Was he suppose to say raped or molested? The latter probably, he was only seven at the time. But he hadn't been just touched, it was full blown rape. Fucking Christ, why was he thinking about it? If he kept thinking about it the clip show would start up and all the black tar heroin in the world would not be able to stop those moving pictures.

Panic suddenly set in, began coursing through his veins though his face stayed blankly calm.

If Jay ever told his parents they would want to press charges. He'd have to sit in the witness chair and recount that night to a room filled with strangers, he would have to look into Mark Jacobs's face all over again, he would have to explain just what had been done to him to every last minute detail.

A lump started to form in Jay's throat, he was unable to swallow it away.

But then again hadn't the statute of limitations run out? Hopefully it had, hopefully time had run out and a trial would have no chance to form. Jay didn't want to set foot near Mark Jacobs again, not ever, he didn't want to see the look in Mark Jacobs's eyes that would surely be there when he would comment on how much Jay had _grown_. But most of all Jay didn't want the people in the school to know what had happened to him.

Most likely people would treat him even more like toxic waste than ever before. There was a stigma against men who'd been raped by other men that Jay didn't want associated with him – at least Jay thought he saw a stigma there and even if there wasn't he didn't want anyone's pity. He didn't want anyone to treat him differently, he'd rather be burned alive on the stake. No one could ever find out.

A loud noise shook Jay of his thoughts. When his eyes focused, when he looked up, he met his father's face. Dad had slammed the table with both fists, leaned forward to confront his son.

"You're high!" He was by far more disappointed than angry. "What in God's name has gotten into you, Jason? Why are you doing this? _Answer me_!"

Jay shrugged, trying to force himself numb to how his mother and father were looking at him. "Words don't come out right."

"Don't give me that, Jason. Please, just tell me why you're doing this to youself. I thought your mother and I raised you better than this."

Here it came. Funny, how one can build up a disguise to hide behind and find that one day the mask has adhered itself to one's face.

"Yeah, a lot of fucking good your raising me did. I thank you for the effort, though," Jay replied dryly.

His mother finally got shocked into talking. "You don't speak like that under this roof, young man."

"I'll say whatever I goddamn please, it's not like you're ever around enough to do fucking shit about it."

"That's not fair to your mother, Jason, you know that."

Jay laughed. "So now we're going into fair now? Shit, like you're really the one to be talking."

Father clenched his teeth, let out a pent up breath. "No one's perfect, Jason. Your mother and I had problems just like anyone–"

"Exactly!" Jay exclaimed, pushing his chair back from the table. "If no one's perfect why the fuck do you have to jump on my back?"

"We didn't do what you did, Jason. We don't want you to make mistakes like we did, but you're certainly far down that road," his mother explained. "Why? Why did you do something like that to that poor boy?"

Jay stood up and tugged at the collar of his jacket. "Because it was funny that's why. Seeing that fucking pussy drenched in pink paint and feathers, it was funny as shit."

"This isn't like you," Mother said softly.

"How do you know what's like me, Mom?" Jay yelled. "You don't have a fucking clue to what's like me! This _is_ like me, but you wouldn't know that because you're never around and you wouldn't know because you were fucking other douche bags behind Dad's backs while he was doing the same to you with brainless cunts! This _is_ like me and it's _your_ fucking fault I'm like this!"

His father started toward him and Jay backed up. "Jason, you don't know what you're saying. You don't even need to tell me what you took, just sit down."

"Why should I? So you can keep yelling at me and make _me_ look like the fucking bad guy here?"

Dad changed tactics on him. "Why aren't you happy anymore, Jason? Didn't you used to be happy?"

"Used to being the operative words," Jay remarked flatly.

"Then why aren't you anymore?"

"Shit happens."

Jay stared at the window behind his parents, focused so hard on the power lines swaying in the breeze that his eyes began to hurt. He couldn't bring himself to look into his parents' faces, he knew what parts of him that hadn't withered away that night would do so if he ever saw the look on his mother's or father's face.

This wasn't how this was suppose to go, but then again Jay had never had a strong grasp onto any kind of planning for this either. His throat was dry, legs weak. All he needed was to get out of the room, to find a place where there was air. If he could breathe again maybe Jay would be able to come up with something, anything, that would keep his head above the water.

Wheels and sprockets were rusted, they hardly turned if at all. The rabid animal of a heart pounded against its cage, screamed and roared and shrieked for escape. The world was spinning faster than the wheels of an Indy car at top speed. The waves of the sea in the stomach were green with nausea, swells crashing against the shore like the people in Galveston, Texas surely saw that fateful night back in 1900. Moist skin had hundreds of thousands of wasps crawling all over it, crossing every inch and crawling into every crevice. Ice water hardened around the spine, made running out the front door a pathetic dream.

For a brief moment Jay was certain it was his own hands that were around his neck, but quick finger twitching proved they were at his sides. No one was throttling him, it was just the lack of oxygen in the apartment kitchen.

It was almost as if by miracle Jay was able to speak. "Shit happens," he repeated gravely.

His father took a tentative step forward, but stopped with his right foot in the air when Jay backed up farther. "We still love you, Jason. No matter what happens, no matter what you've done, you'll always be our son and we'll always love you more than life itself."

"There are some things you can't love someone for," Jay said softly. "Some things, that after they happen, make it impossible to love that person again."

This time it was Mother's turn to try to move toward her son, without success. "Where'd you get a ridiculous notion like that, honey? What you did to that boy and your actions caused by your guilt because of it, we're upset that you could do such a thing, but your father and I could never stop loving you, could never love you any less."

Jay's voice cracked severely, his vision yet to blur. "It's not about that, you dumb fucks, it's never been about that!"

"Then talk with us, Jason," his father pleaded, making no attempt to hide his desperation. "Tell us what's wrong, what's going on. That's all we ask of you, just to talk with us. We won't think any less of you for it."

His head was getting foggy, throat thick, nasal passages heavy, eyes almost itching like they do before one starts to cry. "I don't believe you."

"For the love of God, Jason, just talk to us!"

Either not caring or forgetting that her son would back away each and every time either one of his parents made a move to him, Mother came toward Jay with her arms moving up and out in a hugging position. Ice melted. Jay looked away from the window and made his way quickly to the front door and put his hand on the knob.

"What happened to you to make you be like this? Why are you so afraid?" Mom asked in a faint voice.

Jay's bottom lip was bleeding, he had been biting down on it so hard without realizing it. Now his vision was starting to blur. "You wanna know what happened, Mom?" His voice was wavering horribly, cracking worse than thin ice under a weight. "You really wanna know what happened so god damned badly? I was raped, that's what happened, and it's all because of you! You offered that gay fuck you'd been sleeping with to babysit me and then he raped me! And you were both so fucking focused on the image of who the fuck I was suppose to be back then that you didn't even notice I was still fucking bleeding when you two got home! You didn't care to fucking ask why I was walking so fucking strangely because you two were too caught up in your bullshit circus-like marital issues! And you still didn't fucking notice me falling ever since! That's what happened! I'm fucking broken, shattered into a trillion blackened bits and _neither of you ever fucking noticed _the pieces of me you were stepping on!"

Somewhere along the line Jay had opened the door and stepped outside into the hall. He was glad his was crying, thrilled to not be able to see his parents' reaction to the news as he looked back. "There! I told you! You don't love me anymore, do you? You can't, can you? Don't worry, I'm not coming back!"

The door slammed with such force he heard the framed photographs decorating the hallway walls shake. Several neighbors were leaning out of open doors to see what the fuss was about and Jay quickly turned away from them, started for the stairs as quickly as possible.

The fresh air did him no good, for Jay was choking on it.


	9. Nine

**Chapter Nine**

"_If I could change I would, take back the pain I would, retrace every wrong move that I made I would. If I could stand up and take the blame I would, I would take all my shame to the grave."_

So much for being too chicken to run away from his parents.

Jay was clearly not meant to be a spontaneous person. A momentary, spontaneous decision to run from his parents and not come back had landed Jay in one hell of a pickle. He just had to chose to leave home for an indefinite amount of time, which was all fine and dandy, but he could have at least stopped long enough to gather some clothes first. A second pair of boxers would be nice and the money from his piggy bank, but it was too late now to go back and get those things. As if that wasn't bad enough for extra good measure it had started to rain.

It must be a law somewhere in Mother Nature's book that it absolutely, positively _has_ to rain every single time something angsty happens. What a bitch, as if being homeless with only one pair of shorts wasn't sucky enough.

It could be worse. The rain could have been falling down harder and faster, but for now it was only a light drizzle, and his car ran swell too.

He didn't fully understand why he was sitting in the alley behind The Dot, at the time it had just seemed like a force of nature, instinct or something of the like. Maybe Jay's grumbling stomach had something to do with the choice of destination, but he wasn't about to waste what little money he had in his wallet on something less important than food. Sure, without food he'd eventually starve to death, but if there was no fuel in the gas tank that would trump a bloated, swollen stomach and ravaged muscles any day. Besides, there was a half-melted month-or-two old chocolate bar buried somewhere in the glove box.

If chocolate bars could become poisoned the longer they fermented, maybe Jay would be found in the morning dead and stiff with rigor mortis, one arm hanging out of the window. What a nice surprise for the person who went over to question what the car was doing parked in the middle of the alley. It wouldn't ever happen, but Jay still smirked while imagining the expression on that unlucky person's face when he or she leaned down to look into the driver's side window and made the shocking discovery of a very much dead and pasty Jason Hogart.

When that happened, the moment the Prime Minister heard about Jay's death, the day would be declared a national holiday from now until eternity. More people would rejoice about it than grieve, that much was fact.

Certainly Spinner Mason would be one of those many a rejoicer, for the look on his face when Jay walked around the restaurant and through the front door made that assumption very clear.

He had been glowering over a table by the window, scrubbing the Formica eating surface with such fervor it was a miracle the oaf hadn't worn a hole right through it. When he saw Jay enter his, Spinner's, place of employment his face went a sicklier shade of gray and he nearly tripped over several chairs when he stomped angrily over to the man who had caused the chain of events leading up to a punch in the face.

"What are you doing here?" Spinner sneered, failing to keep his voice in a level whisper. From his clenched hands the faint sound of tearing wash rag could almost be heard.

Jay shrugged one shoulder and made his way casually over to the bar counter, took a stool. "I'm hungry, why else would I be here?"

"You can eat someplace else." And again, more towel fabric began to shred.

"Now why would I do that, Gavin? I drove all this way with a sound machine of a stomach and it would be too much like work to get up and drive somewhere else, wou'nit?"

"_I don't care_," Spinner commented through his clenched teeth, his nasal tone of voice from Ilse's punch fading none.

"But," Jay said flatly, "I do."

Spinner, for being such a tubby guy, made a commanding effort of bulking himself up so that he might loom over Jay. "I don't give a shit," he replied in a low voice. "I want you to eat someplace else. Now. While I'm still young, if you don't mind."

"Actually, I do mind, thank you much." Jay rapped the counter with his knuckles impassively. "And you might want to watch your language there, Gavin; don't want to get yourself fired. Then where'd you be?"

"_Christ_. Stop calling me Gavin."

"Why not? That's your name, isn't it? Says so right on your name tag. Hell, who do I have to kill to get some service around here?"

Spinner took a menu from the pocket of his apron and slammed it down on the counter in front of Jay, completely livid.

"Thank you," Jay said cheerfully. He opened the menu and scanned its contents, muttering softly "Choices, choices".

"Why do you have to do this to me? It's bad enough you got me expelled."

"No, that was all you, buddy boy." Jay sighed through his nose. "Hot dog, a cheeseburger or pizza fries?"

"No. No, I don't think it was," Spinner protested. "You made it all happen."

"Oh, a BLT. That sounds nice, and it was totally your idea."

"Just because I thought of it doesn't mean all the blame should go on me. What does it matter, it doesn't make a bit of difference whose fault it is since we're _both_ expelled."

"Maybe a Cesear salad."

"Just order something, will ya? Make up your mind!"

Jay calmly closed the menu and handed it back to Spinner. "Doesn't matter what I choose. I can't afford it anymore, not when I've left all my damn money at home."

Spinner might have looked confused, but Jay didn't turn to look at him to find out.

"Oh, didn't I tell you? Yeah, I ran away. I can't go back home and even if I could, it's not like they want me to come back."

"What the hell did you do, off someone?"

"In a way."

"What does _that_ mean, 'in a way'?" Spinner switched tactics, instead of sounding enraged his voice had a repulsed tinge to it. "And why are you telling me? I'm not giving out free handouts, do I look like a friggin' shelter to you?"

Jay casually looked the restaurant employee up and down. "Certainly have more square footage than most shelters do, don't you?"

The wash rag might have been a fourth of the way to being ripped in half. "That was uncalled for."

"I was trying to be witty there, Spinster."

"If you're not going to order anything, just get the hell out of here."

Jay smirked. "Somehow I'm not surprised you hardly make any tips."

"_Get out_!" Spinner bellowed, yanking Jay off his stool by the shirt sleeve. "You've caused me enough trouble, Jay, and I won't let you just sit there and heckle me. The last think I need right now is to get fired!"

The manager didn't look as though she was around, but surely given enough time to scoot her butt over to the bar area Spinner would be hoisted up the flagpole by his undies in three seconds flat.

"Fucking Christ, watch the goods, man. I just came here to tell you us outcasts have to stick together." Jay straightened out the only shirt he now owned, silently hoped that no seams had been ripped worse than that wash rag, and began walking away before Spinner really got angry and tried to throw a doughy punch.

As suspected, the restaurant manager showed up on cue and shrilly asked for an explanation for whatever the hell just went on in her grill.

Jay smiled inwardly about this, how someone else in the world was feeling horrible and not solely him. Really, that was the only reason as to why he came into The Dot, but then again he was starving and thought he'd snatch some leftovers from a nearby table when no one was looking.

With everyone's attention on the dramatic scene being played out before them, Jay took a plate of what might have been a chicken sandwich and French fries drizzled in vinegar with his right hand. A third of the sandwich had been uneaten and even more of the serving of fries, but it was good enough for the moment.

Wanting to stay and watch the possible firing of Spinner Mason, but knowing he wasn't nearly that stupid to do so with a stolen lunch in his hands, Jay shuffled quickly to the front doors. He was so busy looking down at his meal with the eyes of an anorexic staring at her stash of appetite suppression pills Jay didn't notice that Ilse Miller was entering the same door he was reaching his hand out to open.

Door collided with hand and plate, plate upturned crashed into t-shirt, ketchup and vinegar and grease soiled cotton blend.

Jay, crazed with a now ravenous hunger and disdain toward his entire day, let out a word that sounded more like what the first caveman might have tried to say than anything in any known language. Everything else came out just fine.

"You bitch, look what you did! I can't afford to get this fucking thing clean!"

Ilse was beautiful, well, all the time, but especially so when she was feeling a surge of anger – the kind of anger brought upon by something completely different than what caused the explosion.

"That's not my problem, is it, you incompetent jerk? Watch where you're going and maybe things like this wouldn't happen to you or, better yet, maybe next time the door'll hit you in the face with such a force as to cause your demise!"

"What the fuck is this, Lash Out At Jay Day?"

"No, it isn't, but you're certainly much easier to yell at than the government so it most certainly should be! Who the hell lets someone walk out of jail after only four years for good behavior? Are they blind and deaf to go along with extremely dim witted?" Ilse asked loudly, apparently forgetting where she was or why because she turned sharply and left the diner with an enraged scoff.

Jay had never liked being confused and he wasn't about to take it lying down, reasoning being for following Ilse out onto the sidewalk.

"_What_?"

Maybe she had forgotten who she was talking to, or maybe she didn't even know she was speaking her thoughts out loud. "Get suspended until tomorrow, come home and find that son of a bitch standing in the kitchen with his hands all over my favorite mug – I'll have to burn it – and drinking _my_ coffee with that grin on his face! Four fucking years, unbelievable, not even half of what that prick was suppose to serve and they just let him go because he was a model prisoner, my achin' ass."

"What are you talking about?"

She was walking in circles, her right hand formed into a fist and grinding against her left palm. "Did they not see the reports, did they not watch the fucking trail tape? My father didn't even tell me until this morning and neither of us believed it, thought they'd look back through the fucking papers and not let Luke out. _The Pope wouldn't have let that kid out_."

"Enlighten me, please."

Or maybe she was completely aware of her surroundings and what she was doing, for Ilse stopped walking, stared hard at Jay. "I should've known something was up when I had to meet the guy who has the doppelgänger set of his eyes on my first day of a new school, when I felt like fucking Harry Potter and feel like my scar was ripping open."

"What the _fuck_ are you going on about?"

"My brother came home this afternoon."

Jay pressed a hand firmly against his head, forgetting about the French fry sauce blood all over the palm. He swore and let his arm drop back to his side. "Shouldn't you be happy about that? I mean…." Jay didn't know what he meant.

What Jay disliked more than being confused, was a person being cryptic.

"I'm a fluke, Jay. I wasn't born a 'fucking lezbo' and maybe I apologize for that."

&&&

In the movies no one stops to address the audience and, in their monologue, explain how uncomfortable sleeping in one's car really is. Not one person sheds the light on just how much like a pretzel one has to be in order to lay down on the seats – uncomfortably and, no, there is not one single comfortable position to be found – and just how shallow one's sleep will be in that horribly contorted position.

Not a soul takes the time to talk about how badly the back and neck stiffen, how heavy and tingly the arms and legs get for being in one placement for far too long and the fact that there's no choice for that because there's only so much room in the vehicle for a tired body to lie.

Only contortionists can have sex in a car, of that Jay was becoming more sure of by the second.

His head was pounding, his stomach screaming, and the smell of grease, vinegar, and sugared tomato paste so thick in the Civic that even with the windows open Jay could hardly breathe. His dreams, albeit strange ones filled with dancing ketchup and vinegar bottles hoping into deep fryers one after the other, were always so close to the surface of wakefulness that it was pointless to have dreamt them at all.

Jay wanted to go home, but home wasn't an option anymore.

Mothers and Fathers want pure children untouched by mold with all their pieces present and eyes shinning with untainted life. They want children with clear, beacon-like laughter who smile missing teeth or gum filled smiles of sheer joy. They want children who will grow up to do something great for the world, not bring it down by inevitably becoming the man they hate. Parents don't want broken children, raped children covered in mud and bruises and blood and spider bites. Parents don't want children who cry themselves to sleep on a moon lit path littered with the carcases of dreams long since dead.


	10. Ten

**Chapter Ten**

"_Sucker love is known to swing, prone to cling and waste these things. Pucker up for Heaven's sake, there's never been so much at stake."_

The was still a good five and a half hours left before Jay needed to find a new set of wheels, a change of wardrobe. The police would file a Missing Persons Report and unless Jay wanted to be found not doing anything would be tantamount to a duck sitting in the middle of a pond in the peak of hunting season – assuming his parents would go to the cops and why would they?

It was better to be safe than sorry, though, and that was why Jay was hiding out in a mostly deserted roadway behind dilapidated houses. It served only to the homes garages and what cars weren't wedged into the small wood structures were parked in overgrown grass and rusting to death – a sin, especially concerning the classic Mustang sitting just before the Civic's front bumper. The Ford looked like it still ran, no tire was flat, but it was fairly easy to get caught with a stolen car with collector plates.

If Jay borrowed that rusting Mustang without asking – but with every intention of bringing it back only because there was no hope for the car's survival – he would be the flaming pink flamingo amidst a sea of polar bears. And even though the rust cancer was contained in small speckles by the rear view window and on the crease of the hood, it was still as noticeable as a neon sign hovering over someone's head; only a small number of people in the world are purely evil enough to treat their classic muscle cars so badly. The plates were another problem: he'd have to hunt around for another classic in order to swap them, that is of course if no one would find a 1998 mini van with collector plates suspect. Since Canada was not yet filled to the brim with Jessica Simpson clones Jay would hold back on riding off into the night with that beautiful, though slowly dying, white V8 kitten.

Vaguely, to get his mind off the travesty of car abuse, he thought about what Ilse might be doing right now. Asleep probably since it was five in the morning, but maybe not. Jay wasn't that stupid, he knew full well that Ilse had most likely reluctantly fallen asleep if at all.

Ilse, in Jay's mind, was sitting on her bedroom floor, knees to her chest, shakily focusing the beam of a flashlight on the door right across the room from her. He was rather sure in the fact that Ilse was absolutely rigid with a combination of fear, desperate hope and painful anxiety for the sun to rise. She hadn't moved for hours, was frozen much like a statue in poise for attack. If the door opened Ilse was more than ready to jump up, rip her left hand out from under the bed mattress to reveal the long and shining knife she had stored there for over four years, and scream as loud as humanly possible.

Jay knew it down to his bones that Doll Face had done this because it was what he had done for years, every single night until he was able to will himself off the floor and into bed. Eventually he stuffed his baseball bat back under the bed and merely laid stiff with wide eyes and aimed his flashlight beam at his bedroom door. Somehow he was able to put the flashlight away and be confident that his night light – now upped to the highest possible setting – would warn him of a reunion with the devil.

He had gone through a night without a lamp on for the first time in ten years. The ketchup and vinegar bottles had at one point stopped their dance into the deep fryers and shattered, hundreds of Mark Jacobs coming out of the ooze and walking into each other to form a larger than life rapist babysitter. Poor Jason had woken up to find that the cold hand on his thigh was his own, nails boring into the tender flesh as if in search of gold. In that moment, staring through fear bleary eyes at his aching hand still attempting to dig, dig, dig, into thigh muscle and bone and marrow Jay realized what he had to do.

Find Mark Jacobs and make him pay. Make him pay with every ounce, every last drop of that depraved man's blood.

Jay would do what Icarus had failed to do: reach the sun without wax wings melting, reach the star without plummeting to his end into the sea below him. It was no longer prudent to try flying around Mark Jacobs, he needed to face him again or burn trying.

For ten years Jay had chained himself into a dark corner, nursing his wounds by ripping them wider and digging them deeper, sewing his eyes sightless and that was what Mark Jacobs had wanted. Jacobs had not only succeeded in shattering the glass figurine of a boy, he had fruitfully caused the boy to wallow in his own filth and every day get a little farther from the bright star of hope.

Jay played only with _desperate_ hope. Desperate hope, overused as both words are in the story of his life, was basically a falsity. It wasn't any kind of real hope, not anywhere in the family tree, but something believed in for the sake of not believing in anything at all. To believe in nothing at all was to say that Jacobs had won, so before the ashes had even settled Jay had embraced desperate hope in a choke hold. But it was a joke. Jacobs _had_ won, had been winning for a decade and Jay's make-believe only pushed the champion further along.

He had forfeited his entire life, handed it to Jacobs on a silver platter with a bloody smile. It was high time to get it back.

&&&

The Miller household on closer inspection was slanted; not in the literal sense, but the home was bias in the kind of way that only this family could have caused. If they moved the house would once again stand straight on its foundation, though somewhere else in the world the new building the Millers walked into would suddenly creak-groan-lean to the side. It was a brand that made Jay stare at a flower pot with vomit rising slowly in his throat.

He was standing on the front porch, to the right of a cedar porch swing bed complete with Far Side comforter and rose yellow pillow. The sanctuary of the open.

Waiting for the door to open was not yet on the activities list, for Jay hadn't rung the doorbell. Nerves hadn't taken a hold of him, but lack of words had. Ilse didn't like him, so how was he suppose to talk to her? What the hell was he even going to talk to her about, anyway? He had driven over here on a whim and now that he was here his mind was utterly blank.

About to swear loudly and walk away, the front door opened and a rather large man stepped out onto the porch and picked the morning newspaper up off the welcome mat. "Rather large", on second thought, didn't do the man justice. He was huge, would make that M. Shadows guy from Avenged Sevenfold blush and forever give up weight lifting; he was _that_ big.

Finally noticing the strange boy on his porch, the man straightened up and snapped the rubber band around the daily newspaper with such ease it was freaky, looking at Jay with the same intensity he had passed down to Ilse.

"Can I help you?" His timbre of voice would also make M. Shadows glue his lips together with industrial strength glue.

Somehow, coming face-to-face with a brick wall of a man who could kill him with a perfectly executed swat to the skull with that newspaper was oddly comforting.

"Yeah. I'd like to speak with Ilse."

Moving his vision away from his visitor, Mr. Miller glanced at the day's headlines. "Do you now what time it is, son?" For such a solid man, the signs of middle age he was not immune to. His hair, though still full and thick and all there on his head, was completely an old metallic shade of gray and shone slightly orange in the rising sun.

"I know it's early, but it's kind of important."

Stern face void of any deep wrinkles, but still showing evidence of a life fully lived, Mr. Miller looked back at Jay. "You're a friend of hers?"

Jay frowned. "Well, not really."

"Then I don't think it's wise to bother her so early in the morning. Ilse hasn't been having a good few days and the last thing she might want is an early morning visitor that isn't one of her friends." Evidently throwing the newspaper on a sideboard hidden somewhere behind the front door, Mr. Miller tossed it over his shoulder and walked out toward Jay who, out of fear of being clobbered in the eye by one of the man's elbows, backed away. "You can come back after she returns home from school," he explained while gathering the pillow and blanket.

"Sir," Jay said calmly. "I won't be here when she comes back from school, that's why I need to talk to her now. I'm leaving the city no later than two hours from now."

"A little young to be heading off on your own," Mr. Miller observed folding the blanket, then looked to Jay with a hooked eyebrow. "You're not taking her with you?"

"No, sir. This is a one man job."

Nodding once, Mr. Miller placed the newly folded blanket on the close end of the porch swing and set the pillow on top of it. "Then why is it so important to talk to her?"

"I still have a chance to apologize to her, that's why. I've fucked up my chances with everyone else in the world, but I figure I still have time left for her."

"That's good of you, but right in the middle of breakfast?" He seemed visibly uncomfortable with that notion of breakfast, his daughter and newly released from prison son in the dining room alone with their father stuck on the front porch with some annoying kid who just wouldn't take the hint of leaving; in fact, he started to look and sound a little panicked. "I'll let her know of your apology…."

"Jay, but that won't work. It needs to be in person or she won't get it."

Mr. Miller was walking back to the front door. "My daughter isn't thick, Jay. She'll understand what you're apologizing for."

"I'm aware of her lack of a thick skull, sir, but she really won't understand if you just give her the message. I'm sorry for holding you up, for having to leave her alone in there with him, but if you just bring her out here so I can talk to her you won't have to worry about Luke."

Panic and confusion, not the two greatest emotions to throw at a defensive linebacker of a man. He turned around and twirled his wedding band.

Softly, concentrating intensely at a knothole in one of the floor boards of the porch, Jay said, "It takes one to know one, sir. You can tell her that if you're so damn insistent, that and my apology. I didn't really mean to call her that and get her in trouble and all the other shit I must've done."

Whether she wanted to or not Ilse had to deal with the rip cord connecting she and Jay, the one at the moment she was completely blind to but would know about soon enough. She might not take a liking to it being there when she learned of it, might want to take a machete to it and sever the line, but that wouldn't change anyone's past.

Jay shifted his body weight to his other foot. "She's a lot more like me than she knows, might want to ever admit. You can tell her that, too, for me, sir. Tell her I'm sorry about what happened."

With a sigh Mr. Miller shook his head. "Tell her yourself, and you can stop calling me sir. That isn't my name, but Bertram is. Stay there."

Doing as he was told, Jay waited as Bertram Miller practically ran into the house to get his daughter away from Luke – most likely the only reason this conversation was being allowed to happen.

When Ilse came out of the house in monkey pajamas and gorilla slippers she didn't seem too happy, but really when did she ever? She did look slightly relieved, though, much the same way Bertram must have appeared when he was able to join his children in whichever room they used for eating their meals.

"He lets you call him by his first name?"

Ilse didn't move any closer than the welcome mat, leaned against the door jamb and tugged down on her top (which she didn't need to do, it was already down to her upper thighs). "So did Atticus Finch with his kids."

Jay smirked. "Somehow I pictured you in a dressing gown."

"Where'd you get a silly idea like that?" Ilse asked, not trying to make a joke, but maybe trying not to let an awkward silence befall the world. "What do you need?"

Jay tried to eat his bottom lip as he thought about what to say, thoughts screaming to be heard over the lightheadedness of hunger. "I…. I'm leaving today. I just wanted you to now I'm sorry about everything." He laughed shortly. "I know, that's so like Jay Hogart, isn't it?"

Perhaps in spite of herself Ilse straightened up a little against the door jamb. "Where are you going?"

"I don't know yet. Wherever the mail forwarding takes me."

"I'm confused."

Jay smiled softly. "Now you know how I felt the other day. I'm looking for someone, but unlike you I don't even know if he's alive."

It took a while. Several silent minutes had to pass before Ilse's break down of that sentence rung a loud, crisp sounding bell to her. She wasn't dumb, though Jay wanted to yell at her _"What the fuck took so long?"_. Ilse just needed to, well, Jay wouldn't know: he couldn't be in two heads at once.

"You should be glad for that. Lucky," she replied in a softer tone.

"No, not at all," Jay stated earnestly. "Look, I just came by to tell you.…. It's too late with everyone else. But since you and me are more alike than either one of us are comfortable with maybe it's not too late with you. I can't take back being an asshole, but I can say I wasn't born one and being the way I am wasn't my main career choice – maybe my third, but defiantly not number one."

Standing in her corner, arms crossed over her chest and legs together in her typical stance, Ilse merely nodded her head and said a quiet "Thank you."

That was a disappointment. What was the point in having come all the way out here, wasting valuable research and travel time and acting like a decent guy for once if all he was going to get was a fucking thank you.

"That's it? Just a thank you? I could've gotten that from a rock, but no. It means _so much more_ when I get it from you."

"I can't write a letter to my own brother, so of course I wouldn't know what else to say. Good luck, how about that? I hope you find him, really I do. Sorry I can't give you anything useful, like a shower."

Gruffly Jay said, "I knew this would be a waste. At least I said it, thought, maybe that'll do a little fucking good."

Ilse sighed. "_Großmutter_ always told me, 'Ilse, never leave a man in a pit without fist throwing down a line of bratwurst.' Granted she was talking about _Großvater_ watching her cooking, but it could pertain to this. I don't have much money for you for gas money, but as long as one of us can find the door to the secret garden it'll do."

"You don't have to."

She laughed shortly. "That's what you came here for, isn't it? Or would a computer better suit your needs?"

Jay shook his head. "I can't spend too much time here, I don't know when the notices will start."

"Notices?" Ilse seems shocked by the idea that there were people in the world who didn't tell their parents everything. "You mean they don't know you're going?"

"Oh, they know. I told them what happened, said I wasn't coming back and slammed the door behind me. They know. That's why I need to find him before the police stop me."

Ilse disappeared into the house, behind the front door for several seconds as she – most likely – poured through her purse. When she came back, she handed Jay several bills folded into a ball and frowned. "Are you sure you want to do this? Ignorance is bliss."

"Can't be any worse than hiding for ten years. Believe me, that's hell."

Wilting slightly, Ilse finally looked Jay in the eyes for the second time ever. Actually, she was staring at his eyebrows, but it was close enough – usually she focused on the tip of his nose. "Ten? So you were…."

"Seven."

It was evident she didn't want to say it, let alone face the time span of Luke's abusive madness, but after a long silence she tightened her grip on herself. "I was five. Finally screamed at thirteen."

"It takes some kind of strength to do that," Jay replied carefully.

"I still hate you," she hastily stated.

"I know."

"Jay?"

He beamed his attention ray on her face again. "Yeah?"

"I hope you find him."

"Thanks."

"I still hate you," she repeated just as quickly as the first time she said it.

"Uh-huh."

Jay turned around and began walking across the porch, down the steps and to his car when he stopped. Ilse was just entering the house when he asked, not too loudly but just enough for her to hear. "Hey, Ilse?"

"Yeah?"

"What…. If you don't mind me asking, what scar?"

"My brother had an old school box stencil of his name. He burned 'Luke Miller' onto my stomach, below the belt line."


End file.
